Neglect

This post topic relates to previous posts about manageability and moderation.  I tend to have "manageability issues" that allow some areas of my life to flourish while others are largely neglected.  My seedlings project was successful overall, however there are a few areas of my life that are in need of a little attention (ummm... like clothing my children, perhaps?).

Take for example my home.  It has not been dusted, vacuumed, cleaned in... well...  I'm too embarrassed to try and figure out how long.  A new friend is coming to visit next week and I HAVE to get this place into ship-shape before then.  There is germination soil on the windowsill, dustbunnies procreating in every corner, and mysterious odors coming from the refrigerator.  I did clean the toilets yesterday, but that just scratches the surface.  A WHOLE lot more work needs to be done.

Then there is my health.  Staying up so many late nights with my seedlings interfered with time that I should have been sleeping.  For me, not getting enough sleep sets off a whole domino effect of other problems like not exercising.  I also haven't been meal planning well, which for me is a "recipe" for potato chips and pasta.  Not so good at all.  So before today's trip to the grocery store, I am actually MENU PLANNING so that I purchase foods that are healthy, incorporate food preparation into my schedule, don't purchase more food than is necessary, and actually eat well.  Still recovering from surgery, I can't do much more than walking for exercise.  That's needs to go into my health schedule as well.

Being an extravert, I have accumulated some very lovely friends over the years.  However I owe so many phone calls and emails it's kind of bumming me out.  I have been assured by wiser mothers than myself that your social life does come back as your children get older.  But they tend to follow that comment with, "But don't wish it away!"  Okay, okay.  I don't want them to grow so fast, but I WOULD like to stay in contact with people who are important to me.  I did catch up with a few last weekend while also engaging in some family fun.  Read on.

Family Fun time had been neglected for far too long, and that was addressed over Memorial Weekend.  The four of us went camping with a group of friends for three nights in Acadia, one the most beautiful places in the world (not that I've seen THAT many places, I"m just saying).  If there is such a thing as a spritual vortex, Acadia is one of them.  We cooked on Coleman Stoves, had group feasts, slept in tents, made s'mores, hiked around, explored, and had a whole lot of fun.

Yes, you read correctly.  We went camping over MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND  - a sacred time for gardeners!  Ideally this would have been a major planting weekend, but the camping trip won out.  Fortunately the good weather this spring had allowed me to plant many things early, so most of that work has already been done.  And a lovely neighbor was kind enough to water my garden while I was gone (because of course it only rained in Acadia, not Southern Maine). 

Upon return, there was definitely some evidence of neglect.  Some of my salad greens are overgrown and need to be pulled out.  Mystery weeds are battling for dominance.  However my seedlings are looking pretty darned good!  Some of my radishes are ready, my second wave of salad greens has grown significantly, my snap peas shot up, and my sunflower seeds have popped up out of the ground.  My "unplanted" seedlings have been relocated from my deck (yes, I have my front window AND my deck back) to a concrete walkway and ready to be planted in my garden, the Plant-A-Row Garden, and the rest given away.

So here an effort, yet again, to get into balance.  My shopping list is ready, the rain has taken care of my garden's need for water, and I'm off to run errands.   Fortunately people, plants, and things are mostly resilient to periodic stints of moderate neglect.

A Mother's Garden

As Mother's Day has been approaching, I have been doing my gardening with motherhood on my mind.  I have been thinking about the cultivators, the nurturers, the harvestors, the gatherers, the chefs, and the makers of beauty.  I think about roots, seeds, blossoming, providing, and nourishing .  We have so much in common, gardens and mothers.  And for me, the garden is where I go to rejeuvenate myself.  Not in a lawn chair, but wandering and working, pulling weeds and observing changes. 

One of the early projects in my garden came with budget considerations and serendipity.  I asked my mother and my mother-in-law for some babies from their gardens, and both of them gifted me with Periwinkle.  The periwinkle from my mother's garden was actually planted by her mother, my maternal grandmother, because that's where my parents now live.  For best effect, I combined the Periwinkles from two different locations and planted them in a ring around a large oak tree in our back yard. 

It wasn't until after they were planted that I became sentimental.  This flower bed is a combined legacy of both my and my husband's mothers, and from both of my children's grandmothers.  I simply LOVE this bed!

Another contribution from my maternal grandmother is jonquils, which are also in bloom right now.  After she passed, the cottage she lived in by the ocean was in such bad shape that my parents had it taken down, put up a new house on the same foundation, and moved in.  The "taking down" process was going to ruin Grammie's flower beds, so I took some bulbs from her garden, a bed that I often weeded as a Mother's Day gift to her, and planted them in the garden of a wonderful old apartment building I lived in for five years.  When we made the move to  a house, there was no question that the jonquils would join us.  Aren't they sweet?  Miss you, Gram!

Now my Paternal Grandmother lived in the same home for at least fifty years, and the flower that most reminds me of her is the lilac.  My mother had white lilacs, but I was always soooo admired Grammie's dark purple ones.  They were in an intensely sunny spot behind her house where I often played with my cousins.  I vividly recall the luxurious scent of those gorgeous blooms!  With every inhalation of lilacs, I think of my grandmother and her house.  When we bought our house, it came with MANY lilac bushes, but none of them were getting nearly enough sun.  I recall one of my first serious gardening efforts being the relocation of multiple lilac bushes.  There are so many that I divided them and have given many away.  Mine are light purple (see pic), but part of my garden visions include a dark purple lilac just like my grandmother's.  Hmmmm...... I wonder who lives in that house now... And if it would be weird if.......

Anyway...  I have to say that my biggest "gardening for beauty" inspiration has been my mother-in-law.  In fact, I think that she is a descendent of.... is it Linneus?  A Swede who documented and classified hundreds of species of plants and flowers?  I'll double check on that.  My MIL's garden is gorgeous and fills her with a lot of satisfaction and pride.  She will not travel or plan any medical procedures in the sprintime because it would interfere with her gardening.  Some of the things she has taught me is the "one person's weed..." lesson (see photo below of a wild strawberry), and that tree stumps make wonderful plant holders.  She believes in natural beauty that is cared for.  Here are some pics from my garden, all inspirations or donations from my wonderful MIL.

GREEN THUMB BLESSINGS

TO YOU ON MOTHER'S DAY!!!

Weeding Plants and People

I hated weeding as a child.  It was a chore that required completion in order to not only receive my weekly allowance, but to also avoid punishment from my erratic father (the latter of which was ALWAYS a priority in our house).  I recall many a summer day weeding in the garden when all I really wanted to be doing is riding my bike, building a treehouse, or playing kickball.  Weeding was tedious and boring and interfered with fun with my neighborhood friends.

At times weeding was even difficult, especially in the rows of early corn.  It was hard to differentiate between the weeds and the seedlings.  One time my father was weeding a few yards behind me and pulled out all of the weeds I had not pulled, at risk of them being corn seedlings.  Very sternly my father commanded my attention, pointed out the lookalike weeds on the ground, and claimed that they were corn.  My heart sunk, believing that I had pulled out these precious seedlings.  Then my heart began to race, fearing the ensuing punishment from this erratic grown-up.  But instead he began to laugh and fessed up.  My heart still lodged fimly in my throat, I attempted to laugh as well.  This was his idea of a joke.  It's my idea of anxiety.

Perhaps this is why I like to weed when I am anxious and/or angry.  Instead of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, I scold the weeds with severe displeasure at their very existence.  I reprimand them for daring take up precious nutrients and space in my garden.  And finally I pull them, trying to pull up as much of their subterranean evidence as possible, leaving their roots to dry in the sun before moving their withered carcasses to an undiclosed location. 

In addition to becoming sociopathic while weeding, I also become philosophic.  I can't help but ponder things liked, "What is a weed, anyway?"  Seriously!  Think about it!  I loved dandelions as a child and was utterly baffled by my father's insistance that they were evil.  Now I understand why.  And how about invasives like evening primrose or wild morning glory?  They are beautiful yes, but they will crowd out your other precious babies.  I took some evening primrose from my MIL's "wild area" and put some in my tiny 0.21 acre lot.  Big mistake.  They are lovely to begin with, then they began crowding out my lillies, my sage, and overtaking my lawn.  Like a total chucklehead I even shared some with my neighbors (sorry guys...). 

So what is a weed, anyway?  The omniscient Wiki says:

A weed in a general sense is a plant that is considered by the user of the term to be a nuisance, and normally applied to unwanted plants in human-made settings such as gardens, lawns or agricultural areas, but also in parks, woods and other natural areas. More specifically, the term is often used to describe native or nonnative plants that grow and reproduce aggressively.[1] Generally, a weed is a plant in an undesired place.

Hmmm... which gets me all philosophical again.  I start thinking about some of the people in my life as weeds that need uprooting or that I have uprooted, somtimes angrily, sometimes by accident, and sometimes without even realizing it.  Do you have any of these people-weeds in your life?  Pretty perhaps, but invasive?  Aggressive?  Sun stealing?  Nutient robbing?  A general nuisance?

Yes, uprooting undesirable plants was definitely a boring chore as a child and a teenager.  Weeding out peers sometimes came naturally, but I often did it with too much venom, much like my family.  Cut off your nose to spite your face sort of stuff.  Weeding out grown-ups was a whole different story.  It was not possible.  They were always there to contend with.  I lived on their turf.  I attended their schools.  I was born into their world.  Many of them I liked, but some of the ones closest to me were pretty toxic.  You know, like the seed packets that warn you not to use around children.  Some parents should come with such labels.

As an adult, weeding out people still comes with a lot of confusion and frustration.  "But he's pretty." "But she smells good."  "But dammit she's strangling me and sucking the nurtients from my soil!"  And when is enough enough?  I guess that it varies from person to person, plot to plot, season to season.  It can depend on how much nutrients you have available to share.  It can depend upon your definition of a weed.  After all, one person's weed is another person's rose.  So do you put up with the invasive despite your mounting frustration?  When and how do make the decision that they have to go?  And what method do you choose?  Do you attack violently with a hoe?  Cathartic perhaps, but you may not get all of the roots.  Do you go all Round-Up on them and risk the organic nature what you have been cultivating? 

I am trying ever so hard to be thoughtful about the weeds I pull and how I pull them.  If I do it correctly, I can do it with compassion and effectiveness.  Difficult, no?  As a child, I could not weed out my family.  They met many of the criteria of weeds, but I was not a full-fledged-farmer yet.  All my siblings and I had learned about weeding people involved bulk quantities of Rouind-Up.  For example, out of four siblings, I don't think that any of us are on good terms with another at present.  It's all hoes, pitchforks, arsenic, and lighter fluid.  Not much thoughtful or empathic about it.  At this point I have a respectful relationship with my father and mother, but I certainly do not expect it to bloom into a gorgeous bouquet.  I have not weeded them out thoroughly like my sibs have at various points in their lives.  But I visit them sparingly.  This limits the amount of "aggressiveness" I am exposed to, the amount of nutrients they can take, and the amount of sun they may block.

Although I was not handed tools to weed thoughtfully and effectively, I am trying.  Honest, I am.  Deep down inside, I still just want to build a clubhouse with my good friends.  A good resource that I have used for weeding people and drawing/maintaining boundaries is a book called "Emotional Blackmail" by Susan Forward and Donna Frazier.  It is especially relevent when dealing with weeds of an especially toxic, substance abusing, invasive, personality disordered, nutrient sucking nature.  And of course a classic is definitely "The Dance of Anger" by Harriet Lerner.  She eloquently guides women through "weeding" in an effective yet environmentally friendly, non Round-Up manner.  And of course there's always therapy.  It's so helpful to lay it all down and look critically at the relationships in your life.

These are the contents of my brain while weeding my gardens.

May your gardens be free of weeds and may your methods of extraction be effective and compassionate.