The first spring weeding of the Labyrinth began yesterday.  It is always a long task, involving a good deal of time crouched on my knees on stone, or duck walking around the spirals with a weeding tool in hand.  Yesterday, I “duck walked” in a whole new way: accompanied by a tiny black duckling.

The Labyrinth has been an evolving piece of art in terms of plant life there.  I tolerate many wildflowers there, such as the sweet violets.  Wooly thyme and moss live side by side and California poppies sprout on the larger outer rings.  But a local weed pest known as “shotweed” is my Garden Enemy #1.  It grows from a pretty rosette of leaves, sending up a stalk with non-descript white flowers very early in spring.  Before the last frost is over, long thin seed pods hang where the blossoms were a week before and the merest touch of the plant sends them shooting like a biological Claymore mine.  So, while I pull many weeds, I really do search and destroy for the shotweed before its blossoms can go to seed.

The little duckling, Daffy, was an impulsive purchase at the feed store—alone in a cageful of buff ducklings, I suspect he was a Easter duck that parents talked the feed store into accepting just to be rid of it.  Daffy is unusually fond of humans, far beyond the incubator raised human imprinting of other ducks we have known.  He is small enough to sleep in my hand and yet keeps up even as I stride from Labyrinth to compost bin, peeping frantically at me.  Daffy is companionable, staying close and pecking speculatively at the weeds I pull.  Tiny fluff that he is, he uses a water filled plant saucer as a bird bath; and when I find and drop an earthworm into said saucer  a madness of peeping, pecking and gobbling ensues.  When a big raven or a few crows go overhead, Daffy dives between my knees or climbs UP my knees to shelter in my shirt.

The weeding is less onerous with such a tiny feathery friend alongside.  I take breaks more often for the duckling’s sake, to feed him soft food from my fingers or fill his water saucer so he can cool down as the shade of morning vanishes and the sun bakes us both.  Usually, while weeding the Walk, my mind is filled with 21 gun salutes and folded flags; but this spring I am thinking of Easter egg hunts with children, violets in the garden and  the laughter of hide and seek.  And perhaps those for whom the Walk was built would prefer those memories as well?

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