Sorry, I have to kill you

Working in a garden includes a fair amount of killing. Mostly weeds, but invertebrate pests as well. Though I've been a vegetarian for over 50 years, I have no illusions about our essential nature as organisms in a vast web of life, in which killing—whether for consumption or defense—is invetable. Weeding falls into the defensive category. We kill some plants so that others might thrive. But whatever the rationale, in weeding we are committing violence against other living things.

One can go about one's weeding unconciously, just doing the tasks needed to sustain the garden without a care or thought about whether this is violence, or whether it has any greater meaning. Given all the other moral choices we have to make in the world, I wouldn't judge someone who never stops to contemplate the slaughter necessary to maintain their garden. But for me, one of the joys of gardening is the way in which mundane tasks like weeding also afford opportunities to contemplate the big issues of life.

One thing I'm very aware of is how much I enjoy weeding. I wish I could say the pleasure was soley aesthetic, the pleasure of making the garden neater and healthier. The process of restoring order. Or maybe something more primal: the pleasure of commiting an act just to enjoy its successful completion. "I act, therefore I am."

When I'm being honest with myself, I'm also enjoying the killing. "Weed, you had the temerity to invade my space, to threaten my beloved plants. I am the garden avenger. It's time for you to die." But in the end, as I'll explain shortly, it's not this bloodthirstyness that gets the job done.

Facing the violence in one's nature doesn't mean celebrating it. We are not merely the product of evolution. Through culture we can develop the resources to nurture our best selves, overcoming our baser instincts. Even if culture can't prevent us from participating in the natural world's cycles of violence, it can shape our relationship to that violence.

Because our gardens are small, all my weeding is done by hand. What I've learned is that weeding can't be done agressively or violently. If I tear at the weeds, I just rip off the tops, and leave the roots intact, with the likelihood that the pIant will grow back stronger. Some weeds can only be dislodged with a trowel, but many can be pulled up with gentleness: grasping the stem gingerly so as not to break it off, pulling tenderly and slowly, coaxing the roots to relinquish their hold on the soil. It actually requires a kind of empathy for the plant, assessing it's strength so as to pull firmly, but not too hard. To successfully dislodge the weed, I have to be in relationship with it.

Maybe it's a stretch, but I liken this process of being in relationship with the weed with how many indigenous people's regard the animals they hunt. These traditional hunters recognize their inextricable bonds with their prey and revere the very animals they prey upon. They are content to be in an open-ended, balanced relationship with them.

Contrast this with the way our forbearers set out to conquer and tame the new world. Nature was to be dominated and exploited, and wanton destruction in the service of expansion was no vice. There are few documents of American history so depressing as the photos of mountains of buffalo skulls harvested in the late 19th century. Even if one were to discount the fact that such hunting was promoted as a way to wipe out the plains Indians, it would still represent a vision of humankind as the brutal masters of all we survey.

I'm afraid this take no prisoners approach to nature survives in the way we often garden. We start with more space than we need, or can manage by hand, and are therefore forced to deploy herbicides and insecticides to conquer our domain. We can only see weeds or insects as the enemy, and never stop to contemplate our relationship to them.

When I weed by hand, I know the job will never be done. I don't even kill the youngest weeds, since their shoots are too tender to be successfully tugged upon. Instead, I let them mature to the point where I can remove them, but I know their comrades will keep coming. I also know that if I cease gardening they will bounce back, and they'll certainly outlast me. I really don't mind. In this dance I try to hold the upper hand while I can, but I know that life in all its insistent messiness will always prevail.