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Posts Tagged ‘weeding’

Watching My Mother Pull Bindweed

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 2, 2026| Leave a Comment »


 
 
With a white plastic five-gallon bucket
as a stool, she sits in the middle
of my garden’s gravel path and wrestles
the long notched rod through the stones.
She moves her arm slowly, 
her back hunched over her task.
I see in her body her father’s body,
how he, too, would toil in the gardens
of others for hours, tool in hand, patient
and thorough. I watch as mom dangles
a slender white root in the air 
to marvel at its twisted length.
I hear her triumphant ha!
as she adds it to the small but 
growing pile of roots and leaves.
The bindweed will grow back
with admirable speed, but she makes
an enduring mark—not in the rows,
but in the heart of this daughter, 
teaching me again how it is we find joy 
offering ourselves in service to each other. 
 

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Surprise Gift

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 18, 2025| Leave a Comment »

 

                 
 
How quick I was
to curse the weeds
spiking up
through the lavender,
but wanting to remove them
is what it took
to make me pause,
to kneel on the ground
beside the thick
purple mounds
and thrust my hands
again and again
into the slender stems
to untangle and tug.
Now, I almost want
to thank those weeds
for the work.
Long after, the smell
lingered on my hands,
a gift so purple,
so humbling, so sweet.

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Practice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on June 20, 2024| 2 Comments »

I plunge my hands into the soil
and tug on the long white bindweed roots
that cling to the cool damp dark.
Never once have I pulled the whole plant.
Always, the bindweed comes back.
Once I might have longed for a weed-free
world. How did I not see the bindweed
for what it is—a chance to touch
again and again what humbles me, and
to learn with my hands the art of acceptance
so my hands might teach my heart.

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