Roots

It’s weeding season! Which it will be pretty much all summer long and kind of into fall. My burgeoning affection for weeding that was sparked last year is growing into a fully developed passion. I just love traipsing out to the garden with my trowel in hand, plopping my bottom down in the dirt and attacking everything that doesn’t look strictly edible or intentional. It is especially satisfying if I can pull up a mother of a long extended root. Weeding like this helps me identify and emphasize the location of the tiny little vegetable plants that I don’t want to uproot. Which I basically decide are vegetables if they are seriously struggling to live and look like no other plant around them (unlike the weeds which are healthy and numerous). We’re finding that a LOT of baby romas are sprouting up on their own from seeds of last year’s plants, and I am on a mission to uproot most of these because I know what all-consuming beasts of a plant they can become. But I also remember how delicious they are, so about 3 of them can stay. I’ll actually give them cages this year, even though I know they’ll only take them as a suggestion.

Trevor is a very different person than me, and a very different weeder. He enters the garden on tiptoe, carefully scans the surface of the soil for anything he might have meant to put there, and gently picks out pieces of grass with his fingers. Then he’ll gather anyone in the vicinity he can find to point out his tiny little carrot sprouts to, so they can join him in awe and marvel. And also to reiterate to them that no matter how ugly the weeds or how deep their roots it’s important not to dig up actual produce when attacking the earth with a trowel. (OK that particular message is pretty much only directed at me.)

The irony of what’s happening here is that while we are making a daily ritual of uprooting plant life, we are inversely committing the larger life action of putting down roots. (I suppose if you wanted to get picky about it you’d say it’s not ironic or inverse at all because the more important relationship to emphasize is with the plants that we are growing intentionally like the peas and peppers whose roots were are allowing to go deeper…to which I would say I disagree because I feel more connected to gardening through the daily act of weeding than the more obscure act of watching something grow itself but Trevor would agree with you because he’s a literalist just like you.)

My point is that we’ve lived in Rochester for two years, mostly in this one house, which is the longest we’ve lived in any one place our entire marriage. It’s been a full year since I’ve been in an airport. It’s been 4 years since I’ve been outside the country. And the longer we’re here, the less I feel a need to leave. When I daydream about vacation or a weekend away, it usually involves some place I can drive to within an hour. This is all a very big deal for us because we’ve both moved- a lot- our entire lives, and we’re very used to considering each place we live as only temporary. But learning how to sit still has been a high priority for us, as we’ve gradually lived in places for longer and longer stretches of time. We’re hoping the next move will be to a farm that we can build a life on for an indefinite amount of time, possibly forever.

I never thought I could be someone who puts down roots and is content to be right where I am. But it feels pretty good. I highly recommend it.

Here are this week’s food photos: