In the Weeds
It was sweaty, uncomfortable work—pulling, digging, squatting—that left me with sore fingers, forearms, and legs.
It was miserable and unimaginably satisfying.
I have been weeding a lot. I’m trying to eradicate a type of what might colloquially be called “crabgrass” out of my yard (without chemicals!) for three long months and I’m thrilled with the results. I’ll remember to have some sort of age-related crisis about the previous sentence another day, I’m sure, but for now, I just don’t care. Because I won. I defeated it. It was epic.
This annual herbaceous crustacean began its conquest of my yard sometime after the winter storm, during a period when I was spending all of my hours and energy assessing frost-damaged plants, chopping up broken tree branches, and fussing with rebuilding now empty flower beds. I was looking up more than down in the garden, so to speak, and thus I missed the early emergence. When I started to mow the lawn again in late May, I saw it, realized what I’d been doing. I’d assumed the spindly seed heads that had popped up in my front yard were from random bits of a native grass, which I don’t particularly mind and usually leave alone. It wasn’t. It was all this “crabgrass” and it was all over my yard.
If you know a species like this, you know the sinking feeling that accompanied this revelation, that I had let it set seed! It’s not precisely invasive, and even beneficial for livestock, but since I have no cows, and just one ridiculous dog, it seemed prudent to try to eliminate it before more seeds set, leaving me with a bigger mess on my hands next spring. That is best done early in the life cycle, digging out small sprouts or seedlings with shallow roots. The drought-tolerant, mature plants, like the ones I found all over my yard, are tough and prolific, even if not particularly competitive. I knew I’d missed that earlier, easier window for removal.
It was going to take a lot of work.
The Battle
First, I carefully removed the seed heads that had already formed and tossed them in the city compost bin, there to be taken to a pastoral retirement somewhere that’s…not here. Once I’d dealt with the threat of tens of thousands of seeds, I got to work removing as many whole plants as I could with a hand weeder.
Horseherb, my amiable native ground cover, isn’t a competitive plant and grows easily among all sorts of grasses. This is why a lot of homeowners in central Texas hate it as much as crabgrass. It will appear like magic all over a lawn. Unlike thick Augustine mats, or even lovely native buffalo grass, Horseherb is not going to keep anything else contained. It did nicely cover over the divots and holes left behind from multiple rounds of vigorous weeding. Hooray for plucky native plants.
This was a months-long process requiring multiple sessions, mostly in order to not grow careless from fatigue. I needed to get the whole root out, as much as I could, or the entire effort would be somewhat in vain. Meticulous, careful weeding like that gets old after about an hour in the Summer heat. I would just start pulling at things from frustration if I tried to keep at it too long. Once I began to take my time, rest when I needed it, or switch to more creative work in the garden, I found that I could make progress without any danger of despair. I worked through the worst patches, plant by plant, disturbing as little of the Horseherb as I could. I checked for the ominous seed heads almost daily and tried to do the serious weeding at least a few times a week. Y’all, it worked.
Horseherb filling in nicely after the last good rain.
A reliable English gardener I know told me that weeds can seem immortal but they’re really not. Those larger subterranean root systems that elude your efforts the first 30 times can and will give up, eventually. After removing who knows how many plants (I think it was more than 50 but perhaps less than 100), I began to notice the new growth had stopped, and the older growth was dying back without going to seed. I was winning.
It was sweaty, uncomfortable work—pulling, digging, squatting—that left me with sore fingers, forearms, and legs. I wore out a pair of gloves. It was miserable and unimaginably satisfying. Some weeds will come back next Spring, no doubt; I was far too late in the life cycle to achieve eradication. But for now, the victory is mine and I can enjoy the prospect of a much lighter, much more manageable invasion next year.
The War
Some of the harder seasons of life can seem immortal; some battles can feel unwinnable. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the difficult tasks at hand, to give up on people and circumstances, to wonder if we can endure the steady labor required just to sustain ourselves, much less to work toward progress and change. Maybe this is what caused the contemplatives of other ages to retreat—not that they themselves couldn’t cope with the complexity of the world, but they simply grew tired from the struggle with invasive forces.
With the world as it is, I understand the appeal and necessity of momentary escape more than ever before. I also feel the temptation to let escape become too frequent, allowing bad things to seed and grow without a fight. How easy it is to let a temporary retreat become a mindless surrender.
We need rest and we need to pace ourselves for the long way back to whatever life comes after this time. If you feel frustrated and worn out, it’s okay. It’s reasonable. Take what rest you need now because it may be how you endure later. I can offer you this one hope, which I assure you I learned from experience—there is deep satisfaction in a long-awaited victory, in the sweet fruit of steady, faithful work, and even in the necessity of rest along the way.
