Yesterday, I talked about how this was going to be a long and slow process, even of just prepping the bed. 30 minutes of what I considered hard work, and only 9 square feet of flattened soil.
I woke up this morning with arms that were a little sore (due to being used in a manner different to what they usually do) and slightly disheartened…this is going to take sooooooo long. But after breakfast and Meeting for Worship, I went to spend another half hour compacting dirt.
I didn’t take a picture, but I nearly cried because in my 9 square feet of “weed free” compacted dirt it looked like there were even more sprouts than yesterday! How can this be? I meticulously removed every green, sprouting thing I saw. I pulled them out root and all. How can there be even more of them?
This is when I am reminded up why I have talked about doing this for almost 10 years and am only now willing to put in the effort. Doing the work of building a garden, working with nature, and demanding that it do as you want is NOT a practice in instant gratification. It is hard, sweaty, and often repetitive work.
My fingers are shaking and my arms are aching as I type this. My muscles are doing work of which they are not accustomed and it hurts. The muscles need time to build and change. This is good pain. Suffering isn’t something to be avoided, it is something to face and work through.
The process of removing things that won’t serve my garden, is also a practice of mindfulness. I have to remember that what I removed yesterday were just the sprouts I could see. These are the ones that have germinated and grown, there are countless other seeds that were embedded in the soil long before today, and the work of removing the unwanted plants in my garden is one that will require me to return to areas I felt were complete.
The work of removing the unwanted sprouts requires constant vigilance because it is a lot easier to remove them when they are young and small. It is much harder when the roots have had a lot of time to develop.
This process is true when I practice mindfulness too. Some days are frustrating because it feels like I have gotten no where, my mind is still racing, my brain just can’t stop, the “weeds” seem to grow faster than I can remove them. Yet, the work of cultivating that space, removing those weeds, is absolutely worth it.
Even with the weeds, the aching arms, the frustration, I do have about 1/4 of my area compacted! Yay!
Engineering Wholeness 
Weeds are really overwhelming! I am ignoring some of my own right now. Can you cover the exposed soil with some landscaping fabric so that more don’t sprout while you’re working on getting the dirt ready? That’s our temporary solution for the space between the raised beds we just built. Newspaper, cardboard or leaves could also work. The labyrinth sounds like a cool project!
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