Posts Tagged ‘earth’

Yes, it is summer and the time of the highly ritualized War of the Weeds. But, you say, violets are not weeds! No, they aren’t, but today, they were Goose lunch. I seeded wild violets onto the Labyrinth, along with a host of other experimental ground covers. The soil there is pretty much unamended thin volcanic deposit atop glacial moraine rocks. So, growth there is a battle, especially in the baking summer sun.

The ritual goes like this as the temperature climbs with the morning sun: I make coffee and while it seeps through the filter, I set the sprinkler to its rounds on the Walk of the Fallen. I drink coffee, check email and reply to message board posts while the ferrets ravage the house, steal my bras from the laundry hamper and hide treats under the bathroom armoire. I drink a frozen protein fruit smoothie for breakfast.

And out to the dappled shade of the Labyrinth I go, bucket and tool in red natril gloved hands.
The wooly thyme and Irish moss (and less pedigreed normal moss) and the ground cover called “Brass Buttons” is all allowed free rein to wander amidst the stones. It does not impede walking or vision and can be scissor cut clear. But the violets are violently leaping up in the moss interlaced interstices of the walk and when fall rains come, they and the sneaky clover hidden amidst the moss, will grow tall enough to obscure the stones. And then, on some grief-soaked heavy-listed day, distracted into forgetting my song, I will suddenly stand becalmed like a small gray sailboat on my own labyrinth—frozen like Lot’s wife. I have to focus there, even so familiar as it is, or I am stricken with the sheer continuation of it all. So, starting at center, round I go, pulling infant violets and some of the larger parents too near the stones. I tug out the clover, too, often ripping phlox, moss, and thyme bits with it. Normal weeds get less mercy still—even scorpion grass, the wild forget-me-nots, are ripped with glee.

A crow sits above me and converses with himself about the idiocy of me duck-walking round the stones as noon approaches with solar fury. I make a note to attack the small patch of weedy grass between the Walk and the Honey House tomorrow morning. Finally, bucket full, and the stones in the sun beginning to steam off the morning’s water, I go to dump the bucket of greenery into the little pond in the goose enclosure. Their “Hey…get out of our space” honking turns to anticipatory murmurs as I turn and they contemplate their lunch.

Now, having begun at the heart of my daily life, with the best maintained part of the gardens, I will move outward to attack the rest. Order will be restored. I am grounded in the element of Earth…even thru gloves, it is beneath my fingernails sinking into me. And the cycle goes on and on and on…month after month. My piece of the planet owns me day by day. And like a captivated lover…..I submit.