I love to pull weeds. Give me a weed-infested bed that needs cleaning and I'm a happy guy. Once I get started, with either a spade fork or just a pair of gloved hands, I'm content to pull weeds until the bed is weed-free and all the problems of the world have been solved. Weeding does that for me. It lends itself to not only preparing the garden for planting, but it gives me time to think through things, in a mindless sort of way. And when I am through, the bed is clean, and my mind is clear.

I should feel guilty for pulling weeds. It is, after all, Nature's way of covering and reclaiming damaged soils. Without weeds, the soil would be bare and apt to wash away with the next rain. There are weeds that fix nitrogen, weeds that pull excess phosphorus from the soil, and weeds that pull up the nutrients from way down deep. In this give and take, the soil improves so that more 'highly evolved' weeds can move in and take the disturbed soil to the next level of 'good soil'. Ecologists call that succession.

By simply living, and then dying, organisms change the environment around them. As more weeds grow up and die, more organic matter is added to the soil. As this organic matter increases, the conditions change allowing other forms of vegetation to grow. Rapidly changing conditions caused by forest fires or floods can quickly change environmental conditions. My weeding and subsequent soil amending also quickly changes the dynamics of the affected environment. Which is just what I want, because I wish to change the environment to one that vegetables or flowering plants will appreciate!

Four years ago I created a new vegetable garden in my backyard. Before the garden was there it grew a great stand of burr clover each spring. Nature grows clover to reclaim hard-packed, low nitrogen soils. In the four years that I have been adding compost and other soil amendments I have changed the conditions in which the clover prefers to grow. On the vegetable side of the fence, keeping my dogs from the garden, there is now a rich, loamy garden soil that grows great tomatoes. On the other side of the fence, in the untreated part of the yard, the burr clover returns each year, begging for some of that compost!

To sooth my guilt for altering the slow and deliberate ways of Nature, I use those fine nutrient rich weeds to make compost. I can now procrastinate with a purpose! I tell my wife that I am not slow in getting to those weedy beds; I am just allowing my compost crop to mature. All that good green weedy growth are my 'greens' that will go nicely with my 'browns' that have been sitting over there in that pile for a few months!

I figured all this out, how to make excuses for not weeding sooner, and how to make excuses for not moving that pile of dead plants, while weeding of course. But my honey, bless her little heart, will soon catch on to my nefarious ways and will make good use of my time gained through the fine art of procrastination. And I, no doubt, will have to spend more time weeding… to keep her happy, my beds weed-free, and my mind clear. The next topic of thought while weeding? How to get a day off from a busy nursery in the midst of spring! That hole in the water in which I throw money, my boat, awaits……..

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