Weeds Become Me

I've been thinking a lot lately about how misleading it is for me to tell people I'm a passionate gardener. When I say that to someone I'm pretty sure that the first image that comes to their minds is a gorgeous landscape of orderliness, that I can be seen in it every day weeding out the two or three dandelions that threaten to overthrow the tidy arrangement of border dahlias. In fact, I'm pretty sure that they are conjuring up a quaint picture of me as a modern day Mrs. Marple, tweeds and all. This couldn't be farther from the truth. It would probably be more truthful to say that I cultivate chaos.

What I've been trying to figure out is how much I actually care that my yard is full of stately weeds almost as tall as myself. A person's yard is often criticized based on how well it's being maintained. Apparently lots of people think of a dying lawn and a tomato patch hidden by the six foot dandelions growing around it is an eyesore. I keep hearing the voice of a friend of mine condemning our whole neighborhood for the horrible state of it's gardens, how no one does anything to take care of or beautify their yards. I personally had a whole different take on the state of the gardens in our neighborhood. I saw yards teaming with flowers gone wild, overgrown lemon trees bursting with fruit, roses weighted down by lush cups of color and perfume, I saw "love in a mist" taking over whole front yards creating a feathery mass of dainty blue flowers. I didn't condemn people for disorder in their yards. I didn't care if their vegetable patch was filled with weeds, I was simply excited to see people growing vegetables.

I've been thinking about all of this because we live in a neighborhood now of very carefully mown lawns, judiciously placed shrubs, and a sparing use of annuals. The farther into the summer we get the larger my weeds are, the greater the chaos, the browner the lawn, and I've been feeling guilty about it. Worrying about how offensive the neighbors may find my yard. What opinions they may come up with about who we are, value judgments they may make based on the number of weeds we are currently cultivating and how infrequently we mow our lawns. Frankly, it has really started to annoy me that I care at all what the neighbors think. That's not my usual way. So I've had to ask myself if I really care about the weeds at all for my own sake.

My answer is very clear. If I had the time to really clean up my yard and maintain a tidier look, I would enjoy it, definitely. When you clean a yard up, mow the lawns, and keep plants trimmed, the beautiful things in your garden really stand out. But I don't have time. Some people who don't have time to keep a garden tidy plant "low maintenance landscapes". I find landscapes like this institutional and depressing. I would rather plant what I love and let it go wild. But I think the most important thing to realize is that the purpose of my yard is not as a pleasant showcase of my design abilities, it's purpose is to provide me with food to eat and flowers to cut. That's my true passion.

I enjoy planning a garden. I would love to have a mini Versailles right here in my back yard. I absolutely love it when form and function combine together. But what I love more than that is eating fruits and vegetables that I have grown myself, gathering flowers to fill the vases in my house, and to share all this with the people I love. There is a practical reason to weed which is to prevent your plants from getting choked of light and robbed of nutrients. Yet I must say that my tomatoes are growing just as well right now, being surrounded on all sides by weeds and volunteer cosmos, as they have done in the past when I've had the time to keep them weed free.

One bonus of not weeding much is that you get to learn the history of your garden. Letting whatever pops up grow to maturity will inform you what has grown there before. Aside from the common weeds that we usually don't value much, there are also other things that can pop up. In my case, seeing a field of cosmos grow effortlessly amongst my vegetables makes me ridiculously happy because in my last garden I couldn't grow cosmos worth a damn. Even more importantly is that as I have watched the cosmos, sunflowers, and bachelor buttons flourish, it has made me feel connected to the last gardeners who tended this spot. We seem to love the same things. So I'm never alone out there.

In the end, I say the neighbors can do what they want with their yards, and I will stop feeling guilty that they have to look at mine. I own this little spot on earth, it's my playground, my constant experiment, a place of exploration, a connection to other people, and to me it is a place of tremendous beauty whether it's been well maintained or left to tangle it's riches up. I don't give a damn what anyone (including friends) think of my yard, it is a huge source of peace for me, weeds and all.