Gardening

We went on vacation for two weeks. We’ve been back for almost the same amount of time we were gone, but I feel like I’m still processing the trip, the fact that we’re home, the return to routine that sometimes feels easy and sometimes feels impossible. There are clothes on the floor from our suitcase that I cannot trouble myself to put away. (Neither can anyone else, apparently.) I have done laundry twice since we returned. There’s just a pile of assorted clean-ish clothes that returned in the suitcase but haven’t been put away, slightly disheveled now, in a haphazard pile on the floor of our bedroom. 

While we were gone, our garden went to hell. Gardening feels thankless, fighting an endless struggle against weeds and feeling it in one’s knees in the process. It might be a fine example of how using proper tools would make a huge difference. I finally got some gloves, so my hands don’t get caked in mud and fingernails split and dirt shoved down so deep into the nail bed I can’t reach in to scrape it out; it can only be washed away over time. I used to have one of those 3-pronged claw tools so I wouldn’t have to pull each weed out one at a time, but like most tools in our house, at some point, the claw was deemed a toy - and a dangerous one they knew they shouldn’t have, which meant they hid it. If I were to ask them where it is, they wouldn’t know. If I were to look for it myself, I might find it but might also sink hours into the search, hours I would never get back. If I were to buy a new tool, I would find the old one immediately upon my return from the hardware store. So I don’t have that tool anymore. Maybe it’ll turn up. 

The front garden is a lost cause. We removed some big tree-sized bushes that used to take up most of the landscaped space. They were dying. And ugly. We replaced those big trees with new, small trees, so the front of the house looks bare and sad, and now weeds have overtaken the beds, so the house has a look of neglect that makes me feel lots of feelings but mainly guilt. There are not enough hours in the day/week/life for me to want to spend as many as would be necessary tending to the front garden. I want it to look nice. I want our house to look cared-for. But the time-cost is too high right now. 

The back garden is where we grow vegetables. If I’m going to pull weeds, it’s going to be there. We put a small, ugly fence around the vegetable garden. I think these fences look awful in every garden, no matter how they’re arranged or dressed up, and I hate that this little fence is the first thing my eye is drawn to when I look out our back window. But if we want the vegetables to survive long enough for us to actually pick and eat them, rabbits need to be kept at bay. Except. Rabbits have flexible bones, something I forgot or maybe just recently learned. 

I saw a baby rabbit in the fenced-in vegetable garden a few weeks ago and thought, Aww a baby, now get outta there. Then I saw that the little so-and-so had eaten the carrot plant, and I was annoyed not only because now the carrots won’t survive but also because of the cliche of the whole thing. I was thinking to myself about how silly it is that Boomers on Nextdoor complain endlessly about coyotes roaming the neighborhood when, if there were actually roving bands of wild dogs, there would not be this many rabbits destroying everything green I’m trying to keep alive. Do your work, coyotes. 

But the other day, I saw a full-grown rabbit in there. It could’ve been the baby rabbit I saw before but grown. It didn’t exactly have identifying features. Unfortunately, my dog saw it too. And my cat. I didn’t notice the rabbit until I had opened the back door to let the dog out to do his morning business. Obviously, Milo (the dog) saw him right away and ran up to the fence, causing the rabbit to run to the other side of the fence and ram his little rabbit face into the metal wires. In the meantime, I forgot to watch for the cat and kept the sliding door open too long, so the monster got out. Jiffy (the cat) also ran up to the fence but from the other side, causing the poor rabbit to sprint across the garden again and bash his face into the wire yet again. Then both of my animals continued to run back and forth around the fencing, making this poor little destructive vegetable eater race back and forth, hitting its face over and over again. It was super sad. 

Amidst the chaos, I got the cat inside. Then, with a little more difficulty, I got the dog’s attention and got him back inside as well. The three of us stood looking out the now-closed back door and watched as the rabbit forced its head through the wires and wiggled its little-but-too-big-for-the-fence body through the opening that I swear is two inches wide and three, maybe three and a half inches high. It was amazing. I also recognized we need to put chicken wire around the lower half of the fence, making the vegetable garden even more unsightly to me. 

I thought I was going to be really into gardening. I thought maybe it was genetic because my mom is an excellent gardener, and of course she will deny it if you try to compliment her, but her garden is always beautiful. Then I thought that I’d like it more once my kids weren’t so little because they put extreme limits on the amount of free time I could carve out for myself, and I didn’t want to spend those precious hours digging in dirt. But now, my kids are old enough to keep themselves occupied, and I still put off tending to the garden until the weeds are so high that one literally cannot see the vegetable plants through the unwanted plants. Not genetic, then. Gardening seems to be an interest one cultivates. Imagine that. 

Household tasks seem to be things I put off until I absolutely cannot put them off any longer, and then I throw myself at them with all of my energy until I expend it all, and then that either leaves me looking for more tasks because I’m in the zone (everyone sort of knows to stay out of my way when I’m like this), or I leave a task half-done because my energy ran out before I could finish. After we got home from Greece, I decided I own too many things, so I went through all of my drawers and got rid of tons of t-shirts and old socks and underwear. I separated them into bags to throw away and donate. Those bags are still on the floor at the foot of the bed because I ran out of steam. I also weeded the garden in similar fashion. Ben played in the yard while I pulled and pulled, throwing 3-foot-high weeds into a yard waste bag until it was dark out, vowing to return to finish the job the next morning. Obviously I didn’t. I’m hoping to use my next burst of housework-related energy on painting trim and built-ins next to the fireplace, so the garden may go untended for a while. 

So in my meanderings, nothing will change except for how I feel about it all. The garden will be there, and maybe I’ll dedicate more effort to it over time. House projects and laundry will always be there, as reliably as the sunset, and maybe I’ll gradually accept their constant presence in my life as a comfort rather than an obligation. I don’t need to keep banging my face against the wires maybe. I can slow down and recognize my own flexibility.