On Gardening

Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating. The food he grows will be fresher, more nutritious, less contaminated by poisons and preservatives and dyes than what he can buy at a store. He is reducing the trash problem; a garden is not a disposable container, and it will digest and re-use its own wastes. If he enjoys working in his garden, then he is less dependent on an automobile or a merchant for his pleasure. He is involving himself directly in the work of feeding people.

-Wendell Berry from Think Little

It’s finally spring. With the snow earlier this month, (my brother who lives closer to the mountains got fourteen inches) and the below freezing temperatures every night, its been a glorious romp in the flowers, (of which, our tulips were blasted into instant oblivion while covered in a sheet of ice.) But now, its eighty degrees and I stand on the threshold of greatness. That is, I stand in the arbor leading into the garden, a nest of weeds, dried stalks, vines, and garbage. It’s been a long hard winter.

On mother’s day it was beautiful and we planted our peas against the garage and the herbs in big whiskey barrels nearby. This is new territory for gardening. We’ve decided to put a few things here and there about the homestead to change things up a bit. I like a little variety and wildness in my landscaping which brings me full circle to the scourge we call “The Weed”. I’m not talking dandelions which are the quaint native peoples of the yard world. I’m talking Japanese Knotweed, also known as Mexican Bamboo, Fleece Flower, Monkey Weed, Hancock's Curse, Elephant Ears, Pea Shooters, or Donkey Rhubarb, which is the Mongol horde of the plant world. I mean, if in due time you can manage to be nicknamed a Mexican, a monkey, a curse and an ass then your doing something wrong, or right depending on who’s side your on. I’ve been battling it for years by picking it and slapping it around a little and to no avail. Some years past I gave up and let it grow and boy did it grow. A great green swath of towering stalks covered the side of the garage and exploded in bunches of small white blooms that the bees found irresistible and commenced to swarm the back yard for a good part of the summer. Pandora would be proud.

I like to call it the BFW and that isn’t an elderly association.

This year I’ve unleashed shock and awe. Donkey Rhubarb, (I’ve decided this to be one of my favorite names of it.) is a Rhizome which means that for what you see up here there is ten times that down there and it will never go away. Ever. It can go nine feet deep and twenty four feet horizontal. It’s the definition of incorrigible and corrig it I have.

Fighting Donkey Rhubarb is like taking on a terrorist insurgency. Let me explain. I spent six years trying to be nice and Wendell may or may not have been proud at the back breaking labor of pulling six foot tall weeds just to have them grow back up again in a week. I’ve since resorted to chemical warfare but even that has been a stop gap at minimum. Round-uping the BFW causes it to merely drool uncontrollably and bare its teeth at us. I believe this is in part because Mr Kurtz (more on the name later) crosses the border to the neighbor’s side whenever I engage him directly, seeks protection from the indigenous population – the roses, peonies, poppies, and horseradish and is over all a real bad ass. (I’m talking an Apache, Mujahedeen, Vietcong, William Wallace who drinks his own piss and shaves with a Claymore.) This is classic Guerrilla warfare.

This year I’ve gone Apocolypse Now on the Donkey Rhubarb and Mr Kurtz doesn’t stand a chance.

Most soldiers engaged in combat are encouraged to dehumanize their enemy in order to ease the killing process. I’ve chosen the opposite approach mostly so I don’t feel like a complete retard when I’m outmatched, outgunned, and outwitted by a plant. (You know – a photosynthesizing, mitochondrial crapping, green, and leafy plant.)  “That Mr Kurtz is a real badass,” I’ll say when I come into the house covered in dirt and blood – mud streaks running down my tear stained face after an afternoon of combat.

Yippe-Ki-Yay. 

Let me recap. Of course Mr Kurtz starts coming up in March. I spray him with roundup. The assault slows but doesn’t decapitate. I cut him down at the knees. Hydra that he is he sprouts two more heads for each I cut off. I cut those down and pour roundup down his gullets like a Herbicidal cocktail. He wilts. April offensive begins. Mr Kurtz sweeps around my flank and hits the horseradish and roses hard. I retreat but not before taking a few of his donkey friends with me. The monkey weed is good but I’ve found an ally. His names Ortho and he's also a bad ass.  I dig up every root ball I can find and cut them in half with a saws all and paint on the Brush B Gone while chuckling maniacally.  I let it soak a while and then cover them up.  May came with no sign yet but just yesterday the little knob of green I'd been dreading appeared.  Is this the Battle of Dien Bien Phu all over?  Is Ortho actually a sissified french man and I didn't know?  We will see.  On Gardening to be continued.

A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has set his mind decisively against what is wrong with us. He is helping himself in a way that dignifies him and that is rich in meaning and pleasure. But he is doing something else that is more important: he is making vital contact with the soil and the weather on which his life depends. He will no longer look upon rain as an impediment of traffic, or upon the sun as a holiday decoration. And his sense of man's dependence on the world will have grown precise enough, one would hope, to be politically clarifying and useful.

-Wendell Berry from Think Little