Job
I went to the garden to water everything and plant a few cucumber seeds, but spent two useful, this-then-that hours clearing pathways, adding to the compost and stirring it, re-staking tomatoes, finally removing the valiant kale plant that survived last winter and provided groceries for months, harvesting tomatoes, and watching butterflies on flowers before finally planting the seeds. Why? It’s my job. I chose my job. I like my job. Time spent on your garden job is also art and healing if you let it.
I approach my garden job like a four-year-old sitting down with a tub of Legos®– time is irrelevant, what happens next is unpredictable, but the intent is for the betterment of the universe. Maintaining pathways is my job, and the universe is counting on me.
Gardeners see the same wild plants show up year-after year in pathways and garden beds. We pull them out for the compost, and often don’t bother to know their names. My phone assures me there is a healthy stand of common wireweed (Sida aduca) beside the asparagus patch. Who knew! If that is indeed wireweed, it is a source of ephedrine which is used to dilate clogged-up lungs, but it also might boost heart rate.
Wirewood leaves are used as a tea in the Canary Islands. Herbal lore tells us its components ease arthritis complaints which helps explain why my compost is free of arthritis. My pathways also host Atlantic pigeon wings (Clitoria mariana) and prairie tea (Croton mononthogynus). Now I know their names, but they still go with wirewood to form a layer in the compost. Everyone contributes to the betterment of the universe except some elected officials.
Maintaining the pathways is part of the job, and I see it as a privilege. What a person sees as a privilege explains something about their intent in life. C. mariana and others will become a nuisance left uncontrolled, so into the compost they go, and that’s my job.
Plants know what compost is for– it’s a plants-only olio, a break-down dance for plant parts, a culmination and eventually a rebirth. My part is to collect the ingredients and stir them around occasionally. Sounds casual, but it’s an art.
While the universe spins, I garden like artists paint. My view is randomness, and a few surprises add to the painting. Everybody is different, and the arrangement of things in this garden displays a degree of happenstance.
Beet seeds were spread in an S-shape around and between the parsnips and the hummingbird mint. I filled in three small squares around the garden with bush bean plants. It’s not about being the best garden artist. Like playing music; do it because you like it and do it your way.
In an artful corner, I planted astragalus seeds in spring because why not, but what grew instead is a healthy redwhisker clammyweed (Polenisia dodecandra). It’s cute but possibly toxic. One source, however, reports indigenous cooks mixed a variety of it with wild onions and whatnot in soups, and they even dried balls of the leaves and stored them for consumption later. Folks who study things note this plant seems to have been spread on purpose in prehistoric times by humans because it was important to them. It’s important to me, and I don’t need a reason, plus butterflies like it.
One element of discord in the artwork is where maypop has run amok. Maypop is closely related to passion flowers as is evident by the flowers. Maypop vines spread faster than bad rumors. Underground runners are aggressive. It’s like they’re having fun spreading underground. That area had previously been overrun by spearmint, but now it’s maypop town. I look forward to trying a ripe maypop fruit.
The maypop discord includes exotic flowers and leaves with medicinal properties. The universe is like that. I apply a modicum of management and move on. It’s part of the job.