<< Back 6/19/02 In the weeds, there is always tomorrow By Scott McLeod The flower garden behind the house my wife and I call home is overrun with weeds. Big, leafy monsters — some with towering, lavender-colored stalks, others the standard green giants — are choking the perennials and other flowers, wild things tall enough to hide small children from our watchful eyes. Some would look at our weed plot as a cruel metaphor of what our life has become. Perhaps, but maybe its story isn’t sad at all. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. The first garden Lori and I grew years ago also descended into a weedy wasteland, but only when it was supposed to — in late summer, after we had steamed its succulent squash and surprised ourselves over and again by the sweet taste of the little carrots we pulled from the ground. That garden grew with amazing vigor, and our success far exceeded what two ardent but completely inexperienced tillers should have been able to coax from its rocky rows. The plants proved resilient and fertile, and we took small buckets of corn, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, squash, and cucumbers from it. It was an amazing bounty relative to the size of the little plot we planted. At that time, basking in new love but still a long ways from thinking about marriage, we went at the garden with unusual energy. We plowed up the little patch of land beside the house I lived in with hoe and shovel, formed rows with our implements and then planted seeds and small plants. Lori would ride her bike over from her house, and the few times we had to water — it was a rainy summer — we did so with the same buckets we later hauled our crops in. We were just out of college, hanging around Boone and Blowing Rock with jobs that just barely paid the rent but provided us with hours of free time together. Sitting at local pubs, lolling at creekside swimming holes or kicked back at mountain overlooks, we longingly discussed how the corn was getting huge, how one of the cucumber vines had seemed to grow half a foot in one day. We weeded as diligently as time allowed, but it was summer and there was other fun to be had. Still, the garden grew. Sometimes I think back and imagine that garden and its fertility as somehow prophetic of our life together since. But now things are a bit different. Our little flower garden is struggling just to make it to summer’s official beginning date this week. A late frost did in some of the early bloomers, and just now a few of the lilies are flowering. A similar weedy fate greeted the few vegetables Lori and the kids managed to plant in a smaller plot out front. They were being swallowed by plants too plentiful to name, but this past weekend a friend who was visiting had a few hours while we ran errands and went at it with our tools. He succeeded at breathing new life into young sprouts. They are surviving, but it’s no thanks to our work. Since that first crop so many summers ago, there have been good and bad years as far as gardening goes. We visited friends last weekend who have built their home less than a mile from where Lori and I planted that first garden, and their own crop was thriving. They had even found time to build a little greenhouse, and now they can tempt winter and plant early, then peel back the plastic and let summer’s warmth do its job. The rows were neat, tidy, perfect. I left feeling a bit defeated, and during the drive home I conjured up thoughts of donning work gloves and long pants, filling the mower with gas and turning the weeds, flowers and whatever was in that plot behind the house into mulch. A few energetic minutes and it would all be gone, then I could start over, wipe the slate clean, tabula rasa. I floated the idea to Lori, and she quickly snuffed out that little flame of insanity, shooting me her patented one-raised-eyebrow frown that translates something like: “Are you friggin crazy or what?” One early morning last week, unable to get to my car and out of the driveway without glancing at the weed patch, I drove to work compulsively eyeing the plantings of my neighbors. Along the streets leading up to our house is a virtual primer of beautifully and uniquely landscaped yards. They are all different and all a joy to look at — flowers, native plants and shrubbery nicely arranged in rows and heights and colors, lots of fresh, damp mulch with no weeds poking through. My own weeds were there to greet me Sunday as I drove home, ready for a small Father’s Day celebration with the family. Lori and the kids were still in Asheville, which meant I had an hour or two that could have been used to put a good dent on the problem. But since I had been in the office all day, I chose instead to wheel out my mountain bike and tour the neighborhood, get a little exercise, perhaps pick up a few landscaping pointers. Riding hard, the burn in my legs chased away whatever guilt I was feeling. I thought that maybe we would get to the weeds by July 4. But we live on a north face at a high altitude, so the growing season is short, the amount of daily sunlight limited. It doesn’t look good. I chugged up a steep hill and remembered back a month ago when the phacelia came in. It’s a wildflower that blooms every other year, its purple petals showy on their two-foot stalks. They fill the woods around the house and even grow from clefts in the large rocks strewn around our yard. Every other year I await their re-emergence a little anxiously. I worry that our domestication of this particular scrape of mountainside will eventually kill them. A few of these hardy wildflowers have worked their way into our little flower plot, and this year they did well despite the weeds. When they bloomed, I convinced myself not to weed so as not to harm such an unusual wildflower. With that, one of the few free days for whipping the plot into shape passed. Instead I played ball with the kids. In fact, there has been a steady flow of similar diversions: inside carpentry projects, weekend trips to see family, friends and relatives coming up the mountain to see us, swim meets, concerts, recitals, camping, and even a quick beach trip. Spring has given way to summer, and both plots continue to thicken with weeds. This summer, I guess, we’ll just let nature take its course. Really, I’m beginning to feel pretty good about it. (Scott McLeod can be contacted at info@smokymountainnews.com)