I love weeding, love it. I think I heard someone once say that they don’t believe people who claim to enjoy this task, but I think it is as different for everyone as different their personalities. I do find weeding meditative, I love to clear space both in the garden bed and inside and even within my thoughts, which is why I write, after all.
The farmer is more of a busy bee. He flits from task to task and gets things done in a circular way. He weeds to get a result. But I sit down and zone out. I move straight down the row, and if the small children allow, I will get to the end and walk away feeling like I finished something, refreshed, accomplished.
The smell of the earth close by, the sounds of outside. Maybe I love it so because it is a respite from the lovely loud noise of a busy home. But I have been thinking about this, bringing forth metaphors while I find time this early, early spring to start clearing away the mess of winter’s entropy–what does the way I garden say about me?
The tasks that lead up to are my favorite. I can spend hours weeding, but also transplanting seedlings, starting seeds. What I don’t always love to do is harvest. Washing and preparing veggies for market is great, and market is always fun. But the real act of completion, the harvest itself, I shy away from. The farmer is fast and efficient and so even though I help when I can and often for ourselves, I can not harvest for hours and hours without going a little batty.
But I want to change that. I want to have something to harvest for myself this year. I am so good at the meditating, the planting, but always afraid of actually letting something come to fruition. So busy with thinking, always thinking.
In praise of this habit, I will say that cultivating the inner workings of a mind is a good thing to do, that I find peace in my soul’s place in this world.
I just want to bring some of that light to bear above the ground.
This year, soon.
I want to do the more tedious (for me) work of harvesting.
Come to our little place in Ohio anytime this summer! I could use an extra weed-er! 🙂
I know, right! All farms and gardens could, even ours, because my four children don’t love it quite as much as I do!
I enjoy weeding too, I like making order out of chaos!
yes, there is such a sense of accomplishment! A good skill to cultivate, bringing order to chaos!