Took a little time, about half an hour, today and cleared a path in the front forty. For what, I am still deciding. I knew it was time to free the space of the onion reign when passersby were beginning to stop and stare out at the onion field and look at each other knowingly and comment in low voiced (in Chinese so I don’t know what was being said). Alright, so it only happened once. But, then, when I had a friend of mine visit from upstate – an artist who gets back to the city periodically, and I realized I was nearly too embarrassed to let her see my yard, and when she did and then recommended I do what the other neighbors do and just put in some ground cover and let it take care of itself, I knew it was time to take up
the matter into my own hands. And it became human vs. nature. But really it was like a little dance because the rhythm of uprooting those pesky little buggers and digging and loosening the dirt was symbolic of finding some little psychological nit that’s been embedded just beneath a rib all winter, loosing it, and setting it free. I love digging after a long quiet winter. Everything begins to breathe again.

As for these guys, they are the dreaded specious wild onions so familiar to outer borough dwellers (at least Brooklynites – not sure if they’ve also invaded our neighbor burgs). My upstate artist friend suggested I make a soup out of them. Last year I just tossed them. I’m thinking the least I can do for their hard work is squeeze a little veggie stock out of them. What’s left after that will get thrown away (not composted) because they are so persistent, I saw several shoots poking out of my compost pile when I turned it earlier this week.