weeds – sethlewis.ie

The Little Weeds

It used to be a vacant lot, in the middle of town. Over months and seasons the grass and weeds have slowly given way to rows of potatoes, apples, carrots, pumpkins, onions, and more. This is our local community garden. We even have a poly-tunnel that fills up with tomatoes, lettuce, and courgettes that grow bigger than my forearm. Some of our volunteers are keen gardeners with plenty of knowledge and experience, and then there are people like me and my wife, ready to do as we’re told. This year, I’ve spent a lot of my time in the garden on one job in particular: killing things.

Rivers, Not Lakes

There’s a small lake in our village with a path around it and an island in the middle where a pair of swans make their nest every year. When the cygnets are born, they’re grey and fluffy and clumsy until they grow up and slowly become majestic. Eventually they all fly away and I don’t know where they go. Then every year one couple returns and there’s a new nest and eventually new cygnets.

The cygnets and ducklings and baby coots (cooties?) on the lake make the place a lot nicer to visit, because there are certain times of the year when the water isn’t much of an attraction on its own. It has the typical problem that most small lakes have: it tends to grow green and manky with pondweed and algae and such, especially in the summer. Some summers are worse than others, but even on a good year (like this one) there are still places where the weeds are thick enough that the little cooties can walk around on them instead of swimming.

The Weeds (a poem)

You don’t know how bad the weeds are until you try to plant and keep a garden. In a similar way, as C.S. Lewis put it, “no man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.” These are the things I was thinking about when I wrote this poem: