Ripping out weeds.

I spent about an hour yesterday afternoon out in the little garden to the north of my house. This was the one that was neglected the worst and has the greatest amount of invasive stuff in it - lots of mulberry, lots of privet, lots of blackberry (I think I have the birds to "thank" for those). Also, lots of elms. (I have an elm tree and the typical prevailing winds seem to mean that the seeds fetch up here).

I got it not quite half done. Another couple hours and I'll connect up with the place in the herb garden that I had already cleared. And then I will plant. I've decided that I'm going to try to get the area totally cleared by the weekend (I probably won't be able to work any today or Thursday; it's the AAUW children's play and I need to help out these days) and then I'll go to the garden centers and get more topsoil for topdressing, and scarlet runner bean seeds, and maybe some nasturtium seeds and maybe a couple packets of basil seeds. (I'm going to TRY basil in this garden, as shaded as it is. It might work...). I'm also thinking if I can find starts of sweet potatoes, I might try growing them in one of the raised beds. (A friend of my parents tried growing them in his garden, gophers or something got in, and ate up all the forming sweet potatoes. But I'd hope that problem would be less likely in a raised bed.)

I'm also fighting the temptation - because I'm really supposed to be saving money, because I'm not going to have income this summer when I'm not teaching - to buy another raised-bed set-up for more tomatoes. (Actually, there's a place I could put a few more tomatoes that's not a raised bed but would work, I just need to clear it out.)

Like a lot of things, the garden work is partly overcoming inertia. Instead of coming home, doing my piano practice, and then watching the news until it's time to fix dinner, I'm going to weed the garden instead of watching the news (or, what is more common for me, flipping dispiritedly between the news, cartoons, NCIS rerun on USA, whatever old movie is on TMC, and back to news). Because really, the news doesn't help me that much. I mean, I suppose it's good to know what's going on in the world, but at some point to me it just becomes distressing, because there's so little you can do to affect most things.

But with the garden, I have more control over it. And there is something pretty satisfying at looking back over your shoulder at the area you've already weeded and see how clear and good it looks, and you can imagine how it will look with all the plants you are planning to grow.

A few weeks ago the head of the counseling center on campus got in touch with me - she's starting up a horticulture therapy program and wanted some pointers on preparing the plot of ground to use. I assume the program is going to be used to help students work out their stress, but I've also heard of horticulture therapy used as a sort of physical therapy, where people like stroke patients re-learn how to use muscles by doing something they enjoy or that is productive. (I've also heard of it being used to help people with more serious problems than just being a stressed-out college student. Of course, in those cases, it would be used as an adjunct with medication; I don't think any therapy, no matter how beneficial, can replace medication if there's an actual neurotransmitter issue going on).

But I know I feel better after working in the garden. Oh, part of it is that I'm not sitting on the sofa having my pessimism about the human race reinforced by the nightly news. But part of it is that it's something physical (it may not be aerobic, but it's still exercise, at least how I do it - I use very few tools, just a pair of clippers and a rake). And that I'm out in the sun and the fresh air.

Well, as much fresh air as can get in through the anti-allergy mask I wear. (At least my pores - the ones that are exposed - are getting to breathe. ["Can you HEAR my pores BREATHE?" Heh. That movie was on a couple weekends ago and I finally got to watch it in its entirety. As wooden as Peter Cook's acting seemed at a few points, it was still pretty entertaining...and pretty interesting...I'd almost call it a pro-God movie, even though it was designed to be an irreverent comedy...]).

But also, there is a sense of it being something you have control over. Something on a very small scale you can improve.

And while I might not be able to do anything about what's going on in Japan (other than sending money to some legitimate relief agency or praying for the people) and I can't do anything about what's happening in the Middle East, I can provide a source of food for the bees and the butterflies (that's part of my plan for some of the garden area: to get some really pollinator-friendly plants). And I can make my neighborhood a little prettier. And I can grow a (tiny little bit, as long as everything goes well) some of my own food.

I do like the idea of having a "pollinator flower garden." I like all the "neighborhood nature" I get in my yard - I don't spray and I don't really landscape, so I get more stuff than some people do, I think. I found two rough earth snakes yesterday when I was clearing out. Because I didn't want to risk kneeling on them or otherwise injuring them as I went through the clearing, I gently picked them up (I was wearing gloves - they can, I've read, make a bad stink when they're scared) and moved them to a place that was safer for them.

I see a few of these every year. I know some people are horribly afraid of snakes, but I'm not, as long as I know it's a non-venomous species. (And even venomous species: I saw a rattlesnake out in the field once and was all, "well, as long as I don't go near to it or it doesn't start coming over my way, everything's cool." Eventually it moved off in the opposite direction from me). Rough earth snakes are TINY. You could mistake them for an earthworm if you weren't looking closely - but then you see the tiny little head, and the little beady black eyes, and the wee small forked tongue that they smell with. They're actually pretty cute, or so I think.

I also think - though I'm not absolutely sure - that cardinals are making a nest in one of the bushes next to my sewing room window. I saw what looked like a pile of leaves in one crook of the bush, and there was a male and female cardinal there, and lots of fluttering wings (it may actually have just been cardinal hanky-panky, and not nest-building, at least not right there).

I don't know why but I love all of that. It makes me happy to think of all those little lives going on, separate from mine, in my backyard, and that I am indirectly providing a home for all those creatures (because I don't have the place manicured like a golf course, and because I plant some different stuff, and because I keep the birdbath filled).