Saturday, October 11, 2008

In praise of weeds

Gardening is great! More specifically, my garden is great! That's because it has weeds in it that are taller than me!

We hadn't weeded it for about a year, because all summer we were in a terrible drought and weeds didn't grow. Then it rained all winter, and spring has been mostly sunny but with rain every now and then to really get the weeds revved up.

We kept looking at it and saying things like, "We really should weed the garden this weekend". This kind of comment is right up there with "I'll work harder next semester", and "I'm never going to eat so much ever again" in the Self-Delusion Stakes.

So of course, the weeds grew up higher than my head.

We finally decided to attack it. So far we've filled up one wheelie bin and 4 wheelie-bin-sized plastic bags. We're about two-thirds done.

The reason I think it's great is that it has given me a great de-stressing activity which I can do daily to blow off steam and tension that builds up while studying. When all you're doing is pulling up weeds your mind goes pretty blank. It just mosies along and stops to admire the finer things in life like grubs, dirt, beetles, and more dirt, rather than the less fine things such as ... oh, exams, say.

And the great thing about the weeds being head high is that you have a real sense of achievement as you go because you're liberating whole cubic metres of garden from tyranny.

So if you have exams coming up soon, try my patented de-stressing technique: a year before, stop weeding your garden. It does take some foresight, or good luck, but it's well worth the effort.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If we assume a random distribution of weeds in gardens, wouldn't this mean that on average tiny wee folk were less stressed that huge lumbering giants?

The midgety tiny folk don't have to wait as long until the weeds are taller than them?

Discuss...

PTR said...

A shrewd observation, anonymous!

I think you are correct. Wee folk have it easier it many ways. For example, it's easier to buy trousers that are too long and then have them shortened than it is to do the reverse.

They also have a lower cost of living because they eat less.

Finally, because glomerular filtration rate is normalized by surface area of the body, small people retain better kidney function than tall people would if they had the same kidneys!