Because It Is Hard

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard...

John F. Kennedy, Sept. 12, 1962

I doubt President Kennedy was thinking of his garden when he announced the space race in his speech at Rice University. But a variant of those words, "because it is hard," kept sounding in my brain earlier this week as I was yanking miles of ground ivy out of areas of my garden I thought I had protected from encroachment with a trench.

Feeding time, June 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

I thought of those words again as I was standing beneath my apple tree this morning and a record-high six squirrels jumped out of it. The house wrens have been shuttling back and forth with food for their young, which must be growing fast. The adults must feed the young by clinging to the outside of the box. From inside, what had been little cheeps are now the same type of dry, rattling "scold" the adults call every time MH or a deer or I get too close to the nest box.

In fact, the wrens seem less perturbed by all the squirrels running around the tree than they are by me after I angrily pull off all the low-hanging ripe apples I can reach, just to have some instead of the squirrels.

Because it is hard.

Another thing I think of at this time of year is the myth of Sisyphus, the guy condemned to an eternity of pushing a large stone to the top of a hill, only to have it roll down to the bottom, forcing him to roll the stone up yet again. Sisyphus' story is used as an allegory for all sorts of things, in my case the uselessness of trying to control weeds when I know they are going to come back, or keep the squirrels from dropping partially eaten apples that will attract deer and other creatures, which will leave a big mess around the base of the apple tree. 

Ground ivy (Margo D. Beller)

And yet, there I was earlier this week outside with my shovel, trying to reinforce the trenches I put in last fall, which were subsequently eroded by recent very heavy rain. There I was struggling with the netting I put in so securely to keep out digging chipmunks that now I can't get in either without going to a great deal of planning and difficulty. 

There I was pulling out clump after clump of ground ivy that was growing over the trench and into the areas where I thought I had eradicated it. This ivy spreads through underground roots that regenerate even if you yank up the above-ground part that breaks very easily. (My weed reference says that if your lawn has ground ivy, dig up the lawn and start over.) There I was trying to push aside the foliage of the daffodils now that the flowers are long gone to allow me to see the other plants now growing. 

Why do I do all this? Because it's hard. You put in a garden, you take care of it. You have deer that will destroy plants you now know you should never have planted, you put up fences and netting. If you don't take care of the garden it will look like crap. If I don't get the apples I won't be able to make apple sauce or cobbler. It's just that simple. 

Last year's apples (Margo D. Beller)

But it is hard. Many times I think, why bother? Why push myself? What's the point? Lots of phrases come to mind: Tired of living and scared of dying. Dying is easy, comedy is hard. In the long run we are all dead. Someday someone else will be living in this house and might chop down the tree. Maybe even pull down the house and replace it with something grander. Pull out the garden I've tended for several decades. 

For now, I listen to the singing Carolina wren and do my work. This and other birds fly thousands of miles to breed in one favored area because the cycle of life must go on. Besides the house wrens there are chipping sparrows feeding in the yard with their parents. I see the yard catbird followed by a begging youngster. Birds don't sit and agonize. Even birds that find themselves feeding a cowbird chick instead of one of their own keep feeding it. They get on with it.  And so do I, even when it's hard.

Perhaps it is true that in the long run the pessimist may be proven right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip. I'd like to believe that.