observations on digging

I hate gardening.

I don’t like digging.

I am not a fan of ants or roots or weeds or rocks or mostly anything garden related.

Weeding is a waste of time, mostly because I can’t keep up (see: five garden beds, below)

We have five garden beds. We inherited them. They’re filled with weeds of various sorts and plants I don’t like. Except for the tulips, rhododendron, and lilacs. Those I like, mostly because they’re colourful but the lilacs make me sneeze. I can also work with the hydrangea. I’d prefer if it was deep pink rather than turquoise and I suppose I could try to change the pH level of the soil but that seems like a lot of work and besides, it had a hard winter and I’m not sure it’s actually alive anymore.

When I actively try to garden, things tend to die. Except the goutweed. That always survives. And rhubarb. I’ve had some success with rhubarb. A friend says that’s not success. Rhubarb, like goutweed, doesn’t die.

I dig and I pull and I rake and I snip. Only one bed, the smallest one. It feels like five, though.

I pull out the irises. Not a fan.

I pull out the wild rose. Also not a fan. Well, I like them along trails or generally, you know, in the wild. But this one? Scraggly. One flower per summer, then just prickly. Not even many leaves. It has to go.

I pull out the maple shoots.

I pull up rocks and discover an extra foot of patio we didn’t know about. I also discover whole colonies of fire ants and their larvae. A population boom looms.

Somewhere online I learn I can pour boiling water on them.

I watch the soil steam while the ants drown.

I pull up the weeds with roots that stretch their way across the whole bed. I pull up the weeds with lacy roots, frothy and full.

I almost pull up the buried electrical cables.

I sweat a lot when it’s hot and humid. Not as much as the ants, though.

I dig and pull and rake and snip for two hours.

There is no buried treasure in this garden bed not even a dinky car.

After, there is soil everywhere: between my toes, under my fingernails, on my back, down my neck, in my hair.

I discover muscles I’ve never felt and there is ice cream for dessert.

Later, I will blow soil out my nose.

How does your garden grow?

© Sonja Boon, 2026.

This post is 100% human-created. Generative AI is premised on the theft of creative labour and relies on continued exploitative labour and environmental destruction. I do not use generative AI to research, write, develop, revise, or edit any of my work.