Notes From The Chief Weeder

The Hospitality of Ignorance

The white eagle doesn’t fly, it spreads its wings in the sky and trusts. This is the first sentence that came today. I’m putting it in italics – it feels like an epigraph.

Since May this year, I’ve been working alongside my husband as a gardener. He’s a trained horticulturist with 30+ years of experience. I WWOOFed (willing workers on organic farms) in my 20s and pottered in the gardens of our various homes over the years. I’ve tended flowers, shrubs and veg, but what useful facts do I remember? A few plant names, the names of a few pests (who never consider themselves pests). In short, I’ve forgotten pretty much all the factual information I learnt back then, so returning to the garden now is like beginning anew.

So much of the work surprises me – Oh, I remember you, you’re Aruncus! – but what surprises me most is that I like being an amateur, an ignoramus even; I like it when members of the public come up to me (we’re working for a charity in the Scottish borders) to ask about a particular plant and I have no idea what it’s even called. I like telling them that I’m the Chief Weeder and we laugh together and look closely at the stems and leaves; we study the bloom. Maybe some small memory will return to one of us – sometimes it does. It’s in these moments that the hospitality of my ignorance becomes clear. Contrary to what I’ve spent most of my life believing, not knowing has wings.