My Summer in a Garden: The Chaos of Weeds and the Price of Order

I went away for a week. The weeds in the garden sensed that I was gone, and they went crazy. When I returned, I found a sea of thriving weeds where my garden had been. I had hoed them before I left. Where did they all come from in only a week? How did they get to be so tall in only eight days?

I have known many who would have given up—who would have said, “I can’t tackle a problem this big”—who would have let the weeds take the garden and who would have hoped to find a cucumber or a carrot hidden among the weeds later. Not I. With hope springing eternal, I got my hoe and began at one corner of the garden.

It was about 6:00 a.m. My plan was to finish the weeding before the deer flies were awake. Few insects in my area can make a human life a misery any more aggressively and ruthlessly than a deer fly. At about 9:00, I was still hard at work, and the first deer fly found me. It bit my neck. Then it bit the small of my back, where my shirt was clinging to the perspiration. For the next three hours, it alternated between biting my neck and biting my back. Several times, my instinct to eliminate my fierce adversary overcame my wish to protect nature, and I swatted at the fly. It was always too quick, flying off just as I swatted myself with the palm of my hand.

Painting of a Summer Farm, My Flea Market "Find"

 

The weeding went ever so slowly. When I reached the beets, I had to hunker down to pull by hand the weeds from the rows. I uprooted at least two beets, and I dutifully replanted them, mounding the dirt around them. In my experience, such replanting never works. Usually, the plant perishes. When it lives, it remains small and relatively unproductive. Why do I bother to replant the uprooted vegetables? Because I feel so guilty for having clumsily removed a growing plant that had sprung from an expensive seed.

When I came to the carrots, I was ready to cry out in anguish. Locating the stems of the weeds was practically impossible. Each time that I thought I had a weed stem firmly grasped between my thumb and fingers, I would softly pull back the foliage with my free hand to see if I had a weed or a carrot, and, with an astonishing frequency, I had a carrot in my grasp. The work proceeded with agonizing slowness. Even as careful as I was, I managed to tear several carrots out of the earth where they had been happily growing.

After several hours, my mind became my enemy. I kept thinking, “Surely, this is not a wise investment. The seeds, potatoes, and onions cost too much money and not enough of them grew. Here you are, losing hours that could be spent on more important tasks, and you could just as easily buy fresh vegetables at the farmers’ market. Why should you provide yourself as an entrée for a deer fly?”

By the time that I was ready to agree that I was a fool, I had reached the squash and cucumbers and was beginning to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The sun was beating down, and the perspiration was flowing freely. My shirt clung to me, and the band of my broad-brimmed straw hat was clammy. Even so, I was not going to give up now.

With a fury formed from the desire for victory, I slashed at the weeds. I did so in brief spurts of energy. My muscles were so tired that I could not sustain a long attack. In between bouts, I stood supported by my hoe for several seconds while summoning enough energy to flail at the bindweed, lamb’s quarter, and redroot pigweed. With a final effort, not Herculean but quite puny in fact, I scraped the last weed away.

I wish I could say I felt sorry for the carnage; after all, weeds are simply plants I consider to be in the wrong place. They were strewn about the garden, their wilting leaves half buried under dirt, half trampled by my feet. At the time, I was hardly contrite. I looked across a garden with well-defined rows of lettuce, onions, beans, and even flowers! Such lovely order had arisen from chaos!

Suddenly, I heard my first wren. I should say, “For the first time, I paid attention to the song of the wren.” Undoubtedly, the wren had been singing all along. I had been too focused on weeding to notice. As the bird warbled its notes, I relaxed and realized, “This is why I have a garden. It is my song expressed in vegetables that I can serve for lunch and dinner—vegetables with no herbicides, insecticides, or other ‘cides’ to make me ill—vegetables utterly organic and radically flavorful.” I could not put a price tag on something so pleasant. Smiling, I nodded that the garden was worth the work.   

My Sacred Places: Minnie Dunn's Inn Near Ogunquit, Maine

I hope I am remembering all of this accurately. Many years ago, I visited a friend who, at the time, was living in Dover, New Hampshire. She encouraged me to spend a night at Minnie E. Dunn’s inn near Ogunquit, Maine. My friend explained that Minnie represented the last of a kind of northeast coastal innkeeper and that her inn was a magical place.

My friend drove me and my luggage to the inn, which was located on Route 1 with a mailing address of Wells, Maine. We took a narrow road toward the ocean. At one point, the road arched up and over an earthen barrier, a defense against an angry Atlantic. Soon, we pulled up behind a three-story Victorian house, not large but certainly tall. It stood all alone with a sandy but rocky beach in front. It had perhaps two distant neighbors of similar construction; they were fairly far down the coast in either direction. Minnie met us at the door that was up a short flight of stairs. She led me into a dim hallway. Even though it was dark, it felt cozy. A small lamp cast an amber glow above a guest register that she asked me to sign. I could hear her breathing. The only other sound was the drone of the sea.

Minnie Dunn's Inn Near Ogunquit, Maine

At the End of the Tourist Season in 1985

(Front and Back of Photograph)

Putting down the pen, I took my first good look at Minnie. She was diminutive. Bright, friendly eyes peered at me from a face that must have spun heads in her direction back when she was a recent graduate from secondary school. Her hair was a billowing white. She smiled and spoke with a deep Maine accent, “May I show you to your room?” Up the stairs and up the stairs we went until I was tucked away at the top of the inn. My windows faced the ocean. I had a tall bed and an ancient bureau. I was surprised that, at her age, Minnie climbed all those stairs without complaint. “Come down to the sitting room when you’re ready,” she said, turning to descend.

Minnie Dunn on the Right

(At the end of her note, Minnie writes that

her tabby “comes 1st now I have him. I believe

you have pets. They come first, or don’t have them.”)

My friend beamed: “Isn’t she wonderful?” I nodded, unsure what to think. “You’re really going to enjoy this,” said my friend reassuringly.

We followed the sets of stairs back to where we had started, and my friend abandoned me, promising to retrieve me the next morning. I was alone in the sitting room with Minnie. She served me tea. The surging of the waves was ever present. Minnie politely explained the rules of her house, such as how to knock the sand off my shoes before reentering her inn. She asked me questions, explaining that she always wanted to know her guests. Gradually, I warmed up to her charm, and I asked her questions. She had been an outstanding student in secondary school in the early 1900s and was a passionate reader. Her original paintings hung on the walls and were lovely. The scent of oils with maybe a hint of turpentine wafted from her workroom. As the afternoon was well advanced, Minnie suggested that I walk along the coast until dinner. She said she had asked a neighbor to bring freshly caught lobster for our principal course.

I strode beside the water’s curling edge while clouds rushed overhead. Toward the north were dark gray boulders. I could easily imagine that I was in a scene from Wuthering Heights. My mind incrementally accepted the thundering of the crests as the natural accompaniment to this place. I saw no other human being. For all I could tell, I was the only person on that stretch of earth.

The time flew. Soon, Minnie and I were seated at her dining table in a topsy-turvy room packed with antique furniture and knickknacks. She patiently taught me how to eat a lobster: “You can eat that part if you wish. I never do, but others say they like it.” We laughed and chatted and had the best time! (Years later, Minnie Dunn was the central character in my first attempt at a novel. While my book was not well written, I think of it with a certain fondness.)

That night, I slept so soundly that I never once awoke until the alarm rang on the bedside clock. I felt perhaps the best I have ever felt in my life! Maybe it was the lobster, or maybe it was the salt air. Whatever it was, it was a tonic to my soul. Rather reluctantly, I packed my overnight bag. I greeted Minnie in the sitting room. I now recognized that she was one of a kind, the last of a Northeasterner of her generation: gracious but firm in her opinions, keen but not inclined to boast, familiar but not too familiar. I heard my friend’s car outside. I settled up for the cost of the room and dinner, and I said my goodbyes. I expressed my hope that I would return.

Letter from Minnie E. Dunn on Christmas Eve, 1985

(Minnie’s closing sentence about rabbits refers to

the greeting card cover that is not shown here.)

After many years elapsed, I did return to Maine. At first, I had a difficult time finding the road to Minnie’s inn. Everything had changed! The sleepy towns that I had visited had become big cities with development in all directions. Eventually, I discovered the road to the coast. I saw new hotels—many of them—about as far as the eye could see. There were people everywhere! I tried to accept the stunning changes, but I could not. I mentally thanked my friend from years before, who had exhibited enough foresight to urge me to stay at Minnie’s inn before her way of life came to an end. Later, I discovered that Minnie had died a few years after she had taught me how to eat lobster at her dining table in her comfortable room with her happy paintings smiling back at us.