Weeding out the weedy.

Since last post, I needed to lay my burden down as they say in old spirituals...and go to the market where I bought a huge bouquet of multicoloured Zinnias  (I used to grow them in the back garden of a house I rented with some girlfriends oh, say about 18 years ago) but haven't grown them since) and fresh Ontario fruit by the basket - blackberries, blueberries, raspberries and peaches - yum! So what did I do? I made a fool, a blackberry raspberry fool - slowlly folding in the puree, studding it with dripping peaches...

I also weeded my garden... literally - the back yard just got weedier as the weeks went by and I hated seeing those weeds more and more so  I started to justify their presence -ie: they're natural, some have flowers, they aren't so so tall....and then, oh they are way too tall, they're taking over and the earth is dry - why break my back pulling? But the only solution was to get rid of them. So I finally got over my big fat laziness (and coralled my husband and youngest...I do hate weeding alone)...and voila, it feels so clean and neat and tended...  I like creative chaos, but that wasn't creative nor constructive, just destructive - soul and otherwise. Now on to fold the mountain of laundry...

In my next post I'll reveal my raised vegetable garden (the only thing that is consistently well-tended ). I would now, but I don't have a photo yet and its too dark to take one. Can you hear the tomatoes ripening in the dark? The vines of the peas curling their tendrils around a new victim?

And, finally, I decided to spend some time with the American poet Walt Whitman, (died in 1919). I have a copy of his Leaves of Grass somewhere, but can't find it - did I lend it to someone? I got a copy out of the Library today.But no preface. The preface is what I was looking for, which I have here below, but all of his writings have such a resonance with me - I discovered him when I was studying at McMaster University a few years back - his words lent me strength and courage when mine was failing, they undergirded my new sense of self, gave me courage to stand up for what I believed and didn't... he is an old friend.

"This is what you shall do; 

Love the earth and sun and the animals, 

despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, 

stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, 

hate tyrants,

argue not concerning God, 

have patience and indulgence toward the people, 

take off your hat to nothing 

known or unknown or to any man or number of men, 

go freely with powerful uneducated persons 

and with the young and with the mothers of families, 

read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, 

re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, 

dismiss whatever insults your own soul, 

and your very flesh shall be a great poem 

and have the richest fluency not only in its words 

but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes 

and in every motion and joint of your body." 



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