Michiko's America

Looking at heart-shaped leaves amongst the grass on July Fourth, my husband and I stood silently sharing an enormous sense of defeat.  We spent a few thousand dollars to deal with them the previous summer.  I didn’t even know the weed’s name, although I’d dealt with it since 2002 in my flower beds.

What I found at the Home & Garden website confirmed our feelings that we were facing an unwinnable battle.  This weed that metastasized all over our yard is called “wild violet.” A deceptively cute name for a ferociously vigorous weed.  As I read the description, I realized that I made two major mistakes.  First, I let these weeds flower in the spring two years in a row.  I knew they propagate through rhizomes, a horizontal underground stem that puts out lateral shoots.  However, I didn’t know they also spread by seed.  Leaving their flowers untouched was a big mistake.  But the even bigger and more critical mistake was that I trusted a landscaping company that told me last summer, “We’ll take care of them.”  They said, that they would “power-seed” grass seeds in layers of soil so that any weeds wouldn’t have any space to grow.  I was so relieved and happy to hear this.  And I just dreamed about a beautiful spring to come.  Green grass and white Canadian anemones and pink cherry blossoms.

Now on my knees, pulling them out one at a time, I wonder if the landscaping company knew what they were dealing with: the weed’s name and how they propagate.  Or I wonder if they cared at all.  My husband and I spent 40 hours, and pulled out 4,000 wild violets, and this is a very conservative estimate.  Standing up and stretching my back, I can easily see at least 2,000 more to go.

Every Monday, I look at the front yard from my bedroom window, and decide where to begin.  My husband mows the lawn on Sunday afternoon, and I can already see some perky heart-shaped leaves popping out among the blades of grass.  The bigger ones are mostly gone, but new ones keep coming up.  In some parts of the yard, the soil has been loosened up after the first 2,000 of them were pulled out.  But sometimes I still need to dig deeper to get rhizomes out.  It hit me one day that the landscaping company had “power rhizome-ed” wild violets, when they cut the wild violets’ roots with a bow rake, before they sowed grass seeds in multiple layers.

One of my friends jokingly said that these wild violets had become my Mount Everest, something to be conquered.  Maybe I looked like I was fighting against nature, but I’m actually surrendering.  Surrendering, I believe, is a mental habit that Japanese develop while dealing with earthquakes and tsunamis and typhoons, and their aftermaths.  It is similar to detachment in Buddhism that releases you from desire and reduces your suffering.  It makes us focus on our tasks at hand without worrying too much about the consequences.

One thing I have learned from gardening is that you can’t control nature.  Weeds’ seeds from three thousand years ago can grow if they are exposed to sunlight.  So, I know all I can do is to limit their explosion.  Even when I achieved a small victory over weeds in one part of the garden, chipmunks would dig tunnels, and deer would eat deer-resistant plants that I’d carefully selected.  This summer, a groundhog destroyed the Virginia Bluebells that I had enjoyed for more than fifteen years.  That was part of my July Fourth combination with white and pink bleeding hearts.  I was quite sad about it.  Nonetheless, I went back to gardening, because you get used to these defeats, and learn how to enjoy what you have.

A couple of days ago, one of my neighbors with a cute bulldog who grazed on our lawn, suggested that I give up.  To his logical eye, spending this much time on weeding was nonsensical.  I agree that weeding isn’t all that meaningful in itself.  But doing something about these rampant wild violets means something to me.

When I was younger, I thought a good way of living is going with the flow of time or the way things were.  That changed as I grew older.  Eventually we get older and die, but if we want to live longer and healthier lives, then, we have to do things that are unnatural.  Take vitamins.  Floss our teeth.  Curb our appetite.  Work out twice a week, not that I do, though.  I see gardening in the same light.  Nature always wins.  Knowing that, however, I’d like to make a feeble and probably futile attempt to make my garden and yard enjoyable, just to say “Hey, I’m here.  Let me have some moments of joy!”

According to the Home & Garden website, wild violets are hard to control because they are resistant to most common lawn herbicides.  So, the old-fashioned hand-weeding is the best way to go.  I do what I can, and yet keep surrendering at the same time, to the power of nature.

Isn’t it what we all do, as long as we live?