Weeding is the act of a human pulling out, hopefully by the roots so the suckers don't continue to proliferate, the plants that are growing in an area where the human doesn't want them to grow.
If all I do is weed, when will I ever plant and tend what I DO want to grow?
It feels as if for the last three years, I've been barely holding my own against the plentiful weeds that came with this lovely home that happens to specialize in sticker-ball-burrs fore and aft. Furthermore, when I go out back to weed or to hang clothes on the solar clothes dryer, I come back with flea bites. So frustrating! We don't even have any four-legged friends living with us!
I know there's a sweet mama black kitty with two white stripes down her back who smells a lot like pot smoke when she lets loose her scent sack. Is she responsible for the fleas or are they a hold-over from the dog who lived here long ago?
Growing out from the corner of skunky's chosen den, which is under the garden shed, is a small stand of poison oak. Today I grabbed it by the root with a bag-bedecked hand and threw it out. I poured white vinegar on the soil. Did you know that white vinegar kills weeds? Just don't use it where you DO want to grow stuff.
I know it doesn't sound as if the back yard is very hospitable, but truly it IS. This past weekend gave us a hint of what's coming with the other "A" month. Come August, we'll be out there in the breezy cool evenings enjoying blazing sunsets.
There's a sweet clear lucite humming bird sculpture that lights up by solar power and changes colors all night long until the sun returns. There are two chaise lounges, a wooden two-seater swing chair, and a couple of tables. There are a couple of lemon trees and one mandarin tree, and an avocado tree, in a half-barrel pot, started from a pit on the kitchen counter. "Harvey-cado" is now three feet tall!
On the step just outside the living room French doors is a sweet pair of bronze kitties cavorting over a terra-cotta clay pot that is shaped like a foot. In it is a cactus that is once again growing its springtime pink flower "toe rings" to surround each of its three toe-shaped prickly lobes. I like the look of the artichoke I planted in the old mailbox summer before last. It looks bigger and healthier this spring than last. Sounds of children playing at two different houses just across the fence - two brothers, maybe 7 and 4 years of age at one house and two sisters, maybe 6 and 3 years of age at the other delight us. Delectable smells coming up from the sisters' house on this first warm-enough-day-to barbecue also delight us.
I'm tired of weeding. I'm dreaming of grilling vegetables picked right from the garden. How did winter turn so quickly to summer? It's only April. I guess I was looking the other way and weeding right after all the rains pushed the weeds up. I'm thrilled that I'm ahead of the sticker-ball-burrs this year, but I have yet to plant the eggplant, zucchini, peppers, butter lettuces, kale, cucumbers, fennel, tomatoes, basil, blueberry bushes, pomegranate, Japanese persimmon and apple trees of my dreams.
The backyard is safe from deer, so there should be no problem, other than hungry birds and maybe the skunk nibbling at produce I envision growing in drip-watered raised beds. Only problem is my vision has not yet manifested.
Like my life, wherein I'm still weeding out what no longer serves instead of plowing ahead with what I WANT to create, my proposed garden has yet to become reality.
Was I absent that day they explained how to get your dreams to come true? Did I miss out on the manifesto on manifesting?
How is it that after three years of living here in Oakland, I still have no productive garden?
It's true that the front yard has been transformed from completely void of growing things to having three redwood trees that seem to be thriving. There are succulents galore and some lovely lavender and clumpy grasses which I chose for their texture and movement in the winds, which are also plentiful every afternoon up here on the hill.
But that back yard, oh, man... I keep doing the approach/avoidance thing of weeding but not planting... apart from the two lemons and one mandarin that seem to be doing OK for now... with blossoms on all three trees.
I moved the dogwood out front thinking it was not happy in the back yard and perhaps dead, but it seems to like being out front. It's got lovely pink and white blossoms opening along with leaf buds. Like me, it's a late bloomer. If it can survive hungry deer who trot down the street most mornings and have already destroyed the Mondo Grass, then I'll be happy to see the dogwood thriving in the dappled shade of the three redwoods whose names are Arthur, Mergatroid, and Jezebel.
They say that the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is NOW. By fall, if I haven't planted those back-yard fruit trees, I'll have to find a new therapist to help me overcome this avoidance thing and approach the purchasing and planting with full abandon!
It's time to grow! Can't you feel the greening?
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