Presence, Security

Sometimes I Mess Up

May 11, 2024
…so I’m grateful for people who know how to fix my mistakes. And who do it kindly and without blame.

My splinter did not come from boards like these. But just looking at them made my finger hurt again. Image by wal_172619 from Pixabay

Because this week?

I made a couple of doozies.

I’ll just tell you about one of them here, though.

Two days after our unexpected May snowfall, I headed out for a run. But before I could get to my favorite running path, I had to walk up our street past the weeds.

There are a lot of weeds these days.

I hadn’t planned to weed. Remember? My plan was to run. But I often say things to myself like, “I will only pull ten weeds! And that will be helpful. If I pulled ten weeds a day, how much progress I would make in a year’s time!” Also, the ground was beautifully, tantalizingly wet after that glorious May rain and snow. The weeds were basically begging to be pulled. 

Except when I was grabbing weeds that circled around the electric pole up at the corner, I got a little too close to it, and it bit me, leaving a splinter about an inch long sticking out of my right index finger.

I did not want to go all the way back to the house for the tweezers after this unfortunate encounter with the electric pole. I was heading out for a run, after all. I wasn’t even supposed to be pulling that many weeds. Ten was the goal. Just ten. (But they had been coming up so easily! It was hard to stop!) Then I noticed poor Biscuit, resting in the middle of our deserted street, apparently having given up on the idea that we would ever make it past the corner, that he would get to go on any kind of outing at all. So I looked at the splinter, reached out with my left hand, and yanked at it, which ended up being a very bad idea, since it broke off basically under the left side of my nailbed.

Not my best decision ever.

I went for my run anyway, and thought I would just soak my finger with a little Epsom salts when I got home, and probably it would be OK. Continue Reading…

Presence

Even with the Weeds

May 4, 2024

Not a weedeating day today, but glad that I was able to get some done earlier this week. Even if that meant that I still have lots of weeds.

I spent some time weedeating this week.

(Not today. Today it is snowing. It is snowing and the highway has been closed for hours because of multiple spinouts. In May! That is not something that is supposed to happen in May. November? Sure! March? OK. But May? Even the signs on the freeway only advise people to carry chains from November through April. They do not say to carry chains on May 3.)

I decided this week after several rounds of weedeating that I need to learn to be happy about my yard in its imperfect state. I think that the home and garden magazine articles have weaseled their way into my psyche and given me the idea that yard perfection would be possible if I just worked a little harder. Yard perfection would mean that I could go out into the yard with my weedeater on a sunny May morning (which it was earlier this week. Sunny and nearly 80 degrees! That was before the cold front from Alaska moved down) and not find so many. Well. Weeds! There would be native plants that might need trimming, but there would be no annoying grasses that produce the foxtail seeds that sneak their way into Biscuit’s ears and paws. I could wander around and wouldn’t find any evil Velcro burr plants, clover plants, or those blasted pink geranium spiny weeds that spread everywhere.

We’ve lived in this house for ten years. I hoped for years that if I could put down enough mulch, scatter enough wildflower and poppy seeds, and carefully tend areas as best I could that I might vanquish those pesky weeds, that in the spring I would triumphantly emerge with my weedeater and find at last that my efforts had paid off.

This has not happened.

Apparently, it is never going to happen.

So I think there is only one fix to this: to learn to be happy with my yard, even with the weeds.

To look around at all that has been done, and all that needs to be done, and say that it is good enough. It is done for now. Done as best as I could with the time that I had. Done and calling it done because I know that there really will never be a “done” that lasts, that stays. Because there is no such thing as perfection on this earth, especially in a garden. Done is an illusion. My pursuit of perfection destroys the beauty of my ordinary. The ordinary has weeds.

The ordinary will always have weeds.

My frustration with weeds can overshadow my appreciation for the rest of my garden, for everything that is thriving and beautiful: the poppies that are blooming, the native bleeding hearts, the pink columbine, the Japanese maple that started as a twig and is now ten feet tall.

So I will still do my best to pull weeds (except not the dandelions. Not so much, anyway. Dandelions are the least of my weed worries. They are bright and pretty, nutritious for humans and wildlife, and do not harm my dog with burrs and stickers). I will remember that the gardens in those magazines have been photoshopped, the weeds professionally erased, and that it is good for me to love my yard as it is. Weeds and all.