I learned something about myself last week during a half-day spent working in the hybrid veggie/perennial garden off the back deck: If I were a little kid, I’d be the kind that can’t have different foods touching on her plate.
How this happened, I do not know.
I live a chaotic life. My desk is strewn with papers, jars of pickles, pieces of folk art. I’m easily distracted, by an insect, the sound of a garter snake slithering through the iris patch or a fat pocket gopher chewing through the soapwort.
But in trying to right the wrongs of two years of benign neglect of the kitchen garden, I found myself transformed into some kind of law-and-order horticulture cop.
First all, the elm shoots had to be chopped down, below the soil. Then the leggy Canadian thistles that rode down the drainage out back and set up shop near the currants, rhubarb, mullein and penstemon had to be plucked. Then the tall grass I had been treating like an accent plant had to be dug from the strawberry patch and the day lily beds.
A 96-gallon polycart later — the compost pile never gets hot enough to kill the weed seeds — and the half-moon of dangerous perennial weeds was back to its old self: a beautiful mash-up of blooms and food. And like my life, gloriously disordered and useful. Dana Coffield
