I spent some time outside today, clearing a garden that had gotten the best of me.

From the gardens point of view, there was not an issue at all. Several species of plants had been brought into the garden to replace a dominant one called Wedelia. It is actually a very pretty plant and hardy, able to grow an inch a day and drop a root system every foot or so. It produces pretty yellow flowers that the bees enjoy and it keeps grass and other things from spreading.

Wedelia is not so smart thou, or maybe it is, but it grows so much that it buries itself with new growth. It is a total solar machine, using sunlight to process air into carbon, tapping into the earth and extracting water for its own use.

So given this wonderful plant with flower, it is difficult to grow anything else in the same spot, unless you extract it from the soil. I am very good at this extraction now. There are still a few root systems left, but I try to stymie its progress by removing its solar collection system and when possible its plumbing system.

This all being said, my garden is called the Aloe Vera garden and five medium size Aloe Vera plants were privileged to be given a new home there several years ago, after an initial clearing of the Wedelia plant. There were some other trees and flowers planted in the garden as well, but the name, stuck. The Aloe Vera garden it is.

The whole process to reclaim the garden took about six hours, one gallon of water,  two coconuts, one with meat, one without, one pineapple, two bananas and some moringa. All of these things came from the land, the very land I am working on. All of them are from the sun. My energy system is also, indirectly from this land, from the sun, a beer from the night before, oh and coffee from this morning and an English muffin, with butter from Ireland.

Most of my work was manual. Hands pulling plants from the earth, small hand tools to fully remove a Wedelia plumping system, clippers, shovels, spades, etc. There was; however, a need to use a large hedge trimmer to lower a plant called Arachis pintoi, which is a great ground cover and also has a nitrogen fixing property so it is good for the soil. It can get out of hand and like Wedelia will just grow on top of itself if not trimmed regularly. It loves to be trimmed and comes back more beautiful every time.

The hedge trimmer uses fuel, petroleum and oil. It is made out of plastic and metal (rocks). For all practical purposes, it is made from plants and rocks. The plants portion (plastic and fuel) came indirectly from the sun.  The rocks were here, but who knows, the rocks were from lava, perhaps a cooling star, a sun in its own way.

There was also a wheelbarrow in play and small pickup truck which took three full loads of extracted greens to the back part of the property for composting, loaded an unloaded by my solar reserves. The wheel barrow is made of wood and plastic and metal. The truck, also a similar machine, but with glass made from rocks, sand and coral, smoothed by the movement of the ocean.

The day was absolutely gorgeous, some clouds and sun, an occasional breeze which attempted to blow through my totally dirt and sweat soaked clothes. Sometimes in the afternoon, there is a rain shower, but not today. It would have been a welcome treat, my body temperature pushing my own cooling system to its limits.

I stopped for the day, with the portion of the Aloe Garden completely weeded. There is some detail work to do, some thinning of the Aloe plants themselves and some edging where the yard grass meets the garden, but minor, easy stuff. My cooling system will not be put to the test again, at least in the Aloe Vera garden.

Come tomorrow morning, any wedelia left will perk and grow. The Arachis pintoi will shake off any cuttings left on the ground and begin its solar collection process again, not the wiser to the total carnage it went through the day before. It will be very happy to see the sun, feel the rain, and even gaze fondly at me, for reasons it will not be able to fathom … its brain a bit on the missing side.

The Aloe Vera will wake to sunlight, having been nearly buried by the other species. It will rejoice in the heat and feel the pulse of its desert capable hydration system.

The gardener will be sipping coffee and eating an English muffin with butter from Ireland, contemplating the new day, feeling the rise of the sun and the joy of the earth. Perhaps a jaunt to the ocean will be in order to employ an external cooling system before the start of another encounter with some plant or tree on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

❤