Spring Cleaning

Thoughts from the garden.

Hello friends,

I spent last weekend prepping the raised beds in the garden. Shoveling mushroom compost out of the truck and into a wheelbarrow, then trying to maneuver it through the narrow space between the beds.

It’s good this early spring work. The kind that leaves you sore, feeling it in your arms and legs. Proof that you did something. Moved earth, moved your body, let your mind tag along for the ride.

Small shoots appear from the ground, hard to identify in their early stages. One of them seems to be a bachelor button, but it’s unclear.

I text a knowledgeable gardener friend. Leave it, we decide. I push the compost carefully around it, try not to smother it. In the end, a bucket is a better solution than the wheelbarrow, a little easier to manage and more control over where the compost goes.

I start looking at all the other signs of life emerging from the soil. What to leave, what to cover, what to pull?

In a few weeks or a month I’ll know more. For now, I have to leave them. Give them the time they need in order to emerge, show themselves, before I decide if it should stay or go. I can’t help but see the metaphor. Pruning, cutting, weeding—all essential to the creative process, of course. But maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to remove what seems to be getting in the way.

We need to let the unruly and unexpected grow for a bit, see what develops with a little time.

Emerging from winter, I find the urge to cut back, tidy up, get rid of the detritus that went unseen during the darker months. The proverbial spring cleaning. It’s an act with old roots. During Norwuz for example there’s the tradition of khāne-takānī or “shaking down the house.” Pre-electricity, a winter of lighting lamps with kerosene or whale oil would leave a layer of soot and grime in the home. Spring offered more light, more energy, the opportunity to remove the layer of winter grime.

Even as someone who isn’t prone to a pristine and minimal space—and certainly wouldn’t put cleaning at the top of the list of life priorities—I can feel the urge. I start opening the doors and windows to let the warmer air in. All of a sudden even the most beloved objects start screaming at me that they want to be moved. The stacks of books that felt full of cozy potential in the winter now feel like unfulfilled expectations—reminders of all the things I haven’t gotten to.

I feel a need to digitally clean house too. I swoop into the inbox to do a mass removal. Delete, delete, delete.

There’s too much in here. I need space for my own ideas.

Gertrude Jekyll’s ’General Plan’ for a Pleasure Garden at Chownes Mead, Cuckfield, 1920. © EDA VIA

Back in the garden, I look over all the dead stalks and pods that were left for the birds. Here too it’s all shouting for a refresh. And yet, I find this craving to pull everything, tidy it all up, turn the garden into some kind of manageable, pristine, organized blank slate a bit odd.

The volunteer plants are always going to emerge. The weeds are always going to take root. Too sterile and too perfect isn’t the sign of something well managed, it’s an indicator that the wildness has died off. What am I after here: something manageable or something that’s alive?

A line from Casey Salerno’s poem The Weeds (Accidentally on Purpose) that lands when I read it:

“When faced with all that overgrowth, doesn’t some large part of you want to

watch it manifest more, just a little bit, to see how wild things really can get”

“Accidentally on purpose” is a strategy I can get behind.

William Merklin, A. M. Ferris Estate, ca. 1936 via Public Domain Review

I put some seeds in the renewed beds. Even if I know it’s early. A little act of hope at least.

Radish. Arugula. Nasturtiums. As I push them into the earth, I make a little wish.

Let it all emerge.

Let it be abundant.

Let it offer something unexpected.

Let it grow wild.

-Anna

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