Lorraine Sommerfeld: Doing yardwork at a blistering pace
As I type this, I have huge blisters at the base of each thumb. As surely as summer arrives on June 21 and as surely as birds fly south each winter, I do gardening each April without wearing gloves.
This is the cycle of gardening gloves for me:
Buy a cute pair on sale somewhere
Lose them as soon as I get home and forget about them
Get blisters
Find them late in the season, decide to save them for next year
Hide them somewhere clever
The following year, buy a cute pair on sale somewhere
I also tend to only find one at a time, usually tucked in a deep corner of the shed I could swear I've never been in. It means only half as many blisters and I somehow consider this a win. I'm an idiot.
I have my father's penchant for yardwork if not his gardening acumen. I also have my mother's hands, which means I have really nice nails, but it also means my skin is turning into tissue paper as I age. I grab the rake and figure I can get an hour in before the blood starts, though it's actually only ten minutes. Dad worked this same yard for 32 years and I don't think he ever got a blister. I'm sure that's where my idiocy has its roots, believing I should be tough enough to not need gloves if my Dad didn't. He's been gone 27 years; that's a lot of blisters.
I never wear gloves to weed, and I weed a lot. This is the time of year to reconnect with my father, and that means sticking my hands in the dirt and reminding myself our connection to this planet begins and ends with how we engage with it. I don't want a perfect yard; I don't want to use chemical warfare on weeds, which as a friend once told me, are simply perennials that someone decided to hate.
My favourite plants are the ones that run out of control, like the ferns that hop the stone barrier and spread their elaborate wingspan however they wish. Every year we await the unfurling of Christafern, a plant that grows so big Ari named it after his very tall brother.
Dad's tiger lilies have no use for being penned up. I split them and give them away and spread them around, but by the following year, they've replenished twice as if to tell me Dad will get the last word. His garlic has come up - again - over 30 years after he last planted it. I know you're there, Pop.
My Mom's irises similarly bust past boundaries, and I haven't the heart to discipline them. I just move rock borders farther out and marvel that in a world where you have to pay for air for your tires, plants are just doubling up and handing themselves to you for free. I'm aware that cats do the same thing, but it's easier to give away plants than kittens.
I talk to my Dad as I'm out there earning my blisters. He was such a great caretaker of his patch of the planet and I'm almost glad he's not here to see how we're destroying it. He embarrassed us tilling the soil with manure in front of our friends and stirring his enormous compost pile with a stick as it gurgled and burped.
At first thaw he was out there, demanding much of his plot but giving back so much more. He traipsed muck into the house every day as my mother said things under her breath but they were always a team. I look at the dirt under my nails - her nails - and remind myself the team is still here.
Right here.