In praise of the weed-growers
Briefly:
In praise of weed-growers | Live dates & workshops | For your stray attention | A very special reveal at the end… | Join my Patreon Community
Hello,
As is always the case at this time of year, my garden is 90% weeds. There’s also a fair amount of bare soil, because the dog absolutely must bury all the food we give her for two weeks minimum, before digging it up again in a sorry state. Last year, I tried to hire a gardener to sort out my terrible mess, but he’s started ghosting me. The hopelessness probably overtook him. I don’t fully blame him. It overtakes me, too.
The problem is that I don’t really mind weeds. I don’t think they’re better or worse than any other plant. I like the yellow ragwort, and the bobbing white heads of feverfew. I think dandelions are excellent. More than that, I admire their will to survive. With no encouragement whatsoever - in a world that finds them ugly, unruly, undesirable - they just keep on seeding and growing, year after year. Weeds show us how radical it is to simply keep on existing. And, having tried many times to grow more expensive, ornamental plants, I can tell you this: the forces of nature seem to side with the weeds over their refined cousins, which wither and die in their droves when confronted with my heavy clay.
I hate tidy gardens anyway, great expanses of neat lawn and flowers that are separate and abrupt, foot soldiers in the war against untidiness. I once took part in a walking tour led by the naturalist Mark Cocker, in which we identified several different species of cricket in one bank of overgrown grass, all of them raising a thunderous chirping that filled the midsummer air. He then walked us over to a beautifully planted flower bed, verged in trimmed grass. ‘Listen to the silence,’ he said. ‘See if you can find a pollinator.’ We did. Absolutely nothing was there. It was a very tidy, very pretty, very dead space.
Last week, I took a rare trip to the theatre to see Jez Butterworth’s iconic play, Jerusalem. Threaded with English folklore and song, it draws us into the unravelling of Rooster Byron, a recalcitrant edge-dweller who deals drugs from a caravan in a patch of Wiltshire woodland. Byron is, on the face of it, an undesirable mess, a compulsive liar, and a danger to the local youth. But he is also a fundamental part of the fabric of the village, a protector of the vulnerable, a sage and a visionary, and - despite his tall tales - a teller of ancient truths. He is a weed-grower, an avatar of our very human tangling. Inevitably, he’s sacrificed by the people who need him the most.
I sometimes think that history charts the rise of the tidy lawn people against the weed-growers. On the face of it, a common sense victory has taken place, the triumph of control over dysregulation, of discipline over disorder. But in fact, it’s a strangulation of all the wild and delicate parts of us, the care and the nurturing, the tolerance for variety, the intelligence of meandering roots. We need to start seeing what an act of violence that is, what a dead monoculture it creates. We need to start pushing back against the rule-bound oppression of the tidy garden and to instead treasure those who flourish in the cracks in the pavement, who find a way to make a life where their seeds land.
I often consider building a deck over the patch of soil where the weeds grow. But then what would the dog do, as she finds a way to manage her lingering anxiety over her food supply? And what would we do, other than to sit on top of a different part of the garden? The dead spaces have already encroached far enough. Let’s not create any more. The tattered edges of this world do its most humane work.
Live dates & workshops
Lecture: Chautauqua, NY, August 5th 2022 @ 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm, at the Chatauqua Institution, part of the Interfaith Lecture Series. Buy tickets here.
Workshop: Rockland, ME, August 8th 2022, 10am - 6pm, Barnswallow Books barn. On Comfort, a day retreat with Elissa Altman, followed by a light communal supper. Booking and more info here.
Reading: Rockland, ME, evening of August 9th 2022, Barnswallow Books. In conversation with Elissa Altman, no booking required, just put it in your diary!
N.B. These are likely to be my only US dates this year, so please come if you can.
Literary Festival: Liverpool, UK, 30th September, 7pm - 8pm. I’ll be appearing via Zoom at the Gravity Festival, in conversation with Prof. Philip Davis and Melissa Chapple. Tickets here.
For your stray attention
Annie Proulx on why we must learn to love our swamps
Lesley Finn on the ‘final girl’ trope in horror movies, and what it taught her about the roles she was playing in her own life
Cariad Lloyd’s Griefcast is on excellent form this season - I loved her interview with Ella Ridbridger about the death of her partner, John. A proof of Cariad’s new book, You Are Not Alone, dropped through my letterbox this week, and I can’t wait to read it.
Jessica Defino’s newsletter, The Unpublishable, is a takedown of the beauty industry from a true insider, including the fake science, the covert racism (when did you last see Black hands advertising nail polish?), and the impossible beauty standards it ushers us towards:
For anyone who needs it, my brilliant mentee Erin Iwanusa publishes The Miscarriage Therapist, aimed at supporting anyone who has survived pregnancy loss
On Instagram, I asked what podcasts you love. I’m now working through the flood of responses - and there are so many brilliant new things to discover in there. I’ve compiled as many as I could here on GoodPods, an interesting new app that links you up to other listeners.
I’ve personally been bingeing on any podcast that brings news of Boris Johnson’s downfall (particularly this one) and on Shon Faye’s excellent queer history podcast, Call Me Mother).
Stray Attention reader Kate Lynch has posted her own About Damn Time video. I will merrily keep on sharing these little outbursts of defiant joy.
Emma Dabiri on The Wintering Sessions is (as Ross Gay would say) a delight!
And Finally…
For several years now, I’ve been quietly working on a project with Audible to turn The Electricity of Every Living Thing into an audio drama. The series, written by Julie Parsons and directed by Caitriona Shoobridge, stars the exceptional Amy McAllister as me (eek!). It’s released on August 4th, and you can listen to the trailer here:
Let me know what you think!
Warmest wishes,
Katherine
If you’d like to support this newsletter and my podcast - and receive lots of brilliant benefits - please join my Patreon community.
Website | Patreon | Courses | Buy: Wintering UK / US | Buy: The Electricity of Every Living Thing UK / US
All artwork by Iveta Vaicule
The tattered edges of this world do its most humane work....swooning! What a beautiful, true sentence!
As serendipitous luck would have it, I found your Substack today and LOVED reading this essay. "...history charts the rise of the tidy lawn people against the weed-growers." Oh my, yes.
I recently wrote an essay that could be your piece's companion, entitled "What Weeds Can Teach Us About the New World Order." In it, I take a walk through an otherwise lovely children's book about flowers that shapes those very notions of tidiness that translate into the marginalization of "those who flourish in the cracks."
It's startling to see how our beliefs are shaped without our awareness! Thank you, Katherine, for this beautiful essay. Happy to have discovered you.