There's more to this than fighting kings and orcs, man

“There’s more to this than fighting kings and orcs, man. Shit.”

The drawing, above, came to me the evening of the first presidential debate of the year. The more I think about it, the more I believe my imagination was begging me to back a bag and run to the nearest pond with pole and stool in hand for some peace.

It has been an incredibly busy year for us in our little woodland. The pandemic has only increased business for my father’s shop, “The Iron Ram”, as well as Paisley’s company, “Spookish Delight”. My mother has been neck deep in teaching her students and dealing with how to teach in this chaos non stop since the early spring, and my own work has faced it’s own challenges, despite my continued remote location. All the while my younger sister has been on the front lines in a hospital 3000 miles away.

This was this was the year the rest of the world finally broke the walls of our sanctuary. Non stop chaos, turmoil and frustration wormed it’s way onto the farm as we did our best to push on, ever forward each day.

Paisley’s Mongolian Sunflowers were the star of the garden this year, reaching an estimated 12ft tall.

The author and the giants

Our garden is a small, 100’x50’ tilled plot down the hill from our house. It is arguably the only space we do not let grow naturally on our property. Comically enough, this is not a request mother nature listens much too. Weeding the garden is important in the early summer, our vegetables are small and cannot grow as fast as the weeds or trees seeking to claim the rich tilled soil. To give them a chance, I spend 3 or more afternoons a week removing natures dutiful troopers set on turning the garden into another patch of woods.

As a child, this duty was boring and frustrating. It never ended, the weeds couldn’t be stopped, it felt hopeless. Now a young adult, I find peace in weeding the garden. This summer I realized that I am not at war with Mother Nature, she doesn’t see this as a fight, it just is.

Pictured here, an early summer harvest. In later weeks, we’d carry 3 5-gallon buckets of produce out of the garden every few days.

Turnips

I never thought I’d respect a weed, but in the end it is truly a force of nature like a terrible storm or the mighty oak.

In the end I hope to look back on this year as a catalyst for clarity. There is a lot that I believed to be important that I now know isn’t. Pulling weeds is important. Setting out before the sunrise to fish a stream is important. Family and friends are important, but not much else.