The Weedening

The perils of being a plot princess

The day has come to weed the plot, and I keep talking to the weeds like I’m a sassy Irish lady. I’ve been watching Instagram videos of one of my favorite comedians who happens to be Irish, and so I’m only a few minutes into pulling weeds before the Irish oaths make their way into the garden.

“Get out of there you dirty bastard” I say in my Irish accent to a hearty clump of something green that yields fairly easily and I toss the clump to the growing pile of green and brown that I’ll be taking home to my own bin, which is part of the rules of the community garden.

“Move you dirty bitch” I say with feeling and an emphasis on the “rt” in the word dirty to another clump. The phrases just roll off my tongue like the sweat that starts rolling down the curve of my back.

Today is the first real day of work. Other than a half-hour spent getting rid of the most egregious set of weeds that was choking the only real plants– a ridiculously healthy set of chives spanning the entire length of what appears to be an approximately 8x12’ garden - I’ve not done any real work before today. Before today it was just sort of gingerly turning over dirt with a shovel cautiously picked from among the detritus in the garage where I’d expected to find more items to help me “garden.” The shovel was it, really, other than a pair of never-worn garden gloves and a pair of knee pads that must have been purchased years ago. I am fascinated by who I was in those 15 minutes of purchasing delusion.

It’s not long before my Irish alter ego gets to work and sweat really begins to show. And I start to feel good. Really good. Part of that is because I’m aware that I’ll be able to return the couple hundred dollars worth of newly acquired garden tools sitting in my trunk.

That’s because I’ve learned more than a few lessons about gardening on this fine, warm day. It’s not just that sometimes committing to care for something means tearing it all up, it’s also that the decisions that you make when you start researching things on YouTube at 5 a.m. can always be changed. Cuddled under the blankets in the still-dark morning that day, I became convinced that because I needed to till up the entire garden, my recently-turned-60 back meant I should really consider letting a little electric tiller do the work for me. There was one on sale for $109, I knew someone else who could use this tool later, and it would make short work of the project without making a squeak of noise or doing any harm to the environment (other than the broader harm of buying a new product in general, but I left that argument alone and went to the coffee shop).

Then off to the store I went, confident in my decision to take care of my body and my garden at the same time. Good girl, I whispered to myself, sipping at my protein-infused hot chocolate in the car on the way, and congratulating myself on my unique approach to self-care.

The store was filled with equally enthusiastic people, brightly hopeful about their own improvement projects, and I marched right to my compact electric tiller, which I felt I knew quite well by now after watching so many videos of it tearing up garden beds and small bits of acreage. Still, I dutifully read the box while I slowly walked to the checkout aisle, reading one important tidbit I’d neglected to note: “Battery not included.”

“Okay,” I thought. “How much could a battery cost?” I thought gamely.

I don’t want to tell you how much it cost. It was so much that a normal person would say “Good lord just use a damned shovel you lazy cow.” But no. I stuck to my garden princess narrative and will just say it took several minutes of me standing in front of that electric tiller, recommitting to myself the argument of taking care of my body. After that argument quite quickly fell apart, followed quickly by the decision that somehow I just deserved to take it easy on myself, I then decided that I could just sell the thing and in the end it would be just like renting it. At some point I think I just blinked and quit arguing and walked resolutely toward the checkout with the damned thing in the cart. I think they call this a fugue state.

On the way to the checkout I spied a $36 analog version of the thing – called a garden weasel – which I grabbed on a whim, thinking that if I decided at the last minute to just tear the damned garden up by hand I could use that and return the electric tiller. Maybe I’d have more confidence in myself when I got there. It had been, after all, a solid week since I’d been to the plot and I never had even gotten around to measuring the space, so maybe it was smaller than I was picturing.

As I drove toward the community garden, I remembered the original email from the organizers, talking about a code to a shed and it occurred to me: What would be in a shed if not…. garden tools? Things like garden weasels.

Maybe a garden princess uses tools.

Sure enough, I unlocked the shed and if I were starring in my own sitcom, Hallelujah would play, as the sunlight shone into the dark shed, illuminating a candy store full of pointy implements. I looked in on a long row of every garden tool you could imagine: Shovels, rakes, hoes, pitchforks, weed-picker things and other gardening gizmos I’d never seen and certainly could not name. But right there was the exact item I’d just purchased – barely less shiny and just as ready to tear the shit out of my not-that-big garden plot.

It took about an hour to clear a two-foot-wide strip of the bed and I went over it with the weasel device again and again, but each time a bright green remnant showed itself, and my Irish voice came out again. In all it took about three and-a-half hours to rid my plot of every bit of weed and turn over all the soil. My husband and son came the next day to help me add new soil and compost because while I’m cheering on my badass plot princess, she’s not too proud to ask for some help.

But I forgot to tell you about the potatoes! I guess it’s fitting that I’m Irish in the moment, because my Irish accent whispers an oath, then yelled out loud, “Holy hell!” when I pulled up what I thought was a weed, and at the end of it is dangling a large brown potato the size of my fist. It looks good enough to eat, and I decide I’ll take it home tonight. I don’t know why I’m surprised, but I uncover five or six more of them before I’m finished. Since then, I’ve gotten curious and learned enough about potatoes to know that they are pretty easy to grow in a pot at home. And I think there’s enough sun at home to grow potatoes there.

See? I’m learning.

Before: See the weasel. Praise the weasel.

After. Neighboring plot’s leaf mulch invading my spot but dog approves the job. The next day, the adding of compost and new soil makes for a bed ready for planting. (I know. Three hours to dig up all that? I mean… I took a few breaks. I took the dog for a walk. But I was very thorough.

I learn what a potato looks like. Next thing to learn: How to use a camera.