Weeding by Margaret Ullrich

There must be something in the air.

Maybe the planets are in alignment... or out of it.

Last week I weeded out a few FaceBook friends.

I was a little nervous about it.

I was afraid I'd get a tearstained email.

Or a FaceBook message.

With a sad face or a :-(  

Nope.

To be honest, I don't thing they even knew or cared.

I feel like a weight's been taken off my shoulders.

Or at least my computer's mail inbox.

There's been less useless notices about strangers posting on other strangers' walls.

Walls I couldn't touch.

Unless I friended the stranger because we had a "friend" in common.

Been there, done that.

Why hadn't I done this before?

We finally got a break in the Autumn-like weather.

And the rain was only falling at night. 

So... Paul and I tackled the yard work.

He mowed and I weeded. 

Whenever I work in the garden, I remember my Pop.

He was a farmboy, through and through.

He turned the garden of our home in College Point into a main food source.

He had to, after Lily Tulip moved to New Jersey.

That threw quite a few main breadwinners out of work.

It was the 60s and men still called themselves that.

It was long before the movie Mr. Mom.

Pop knew green beans produced a regular crop within a short time.

So he planted rows and rows of green beans.

We had green beans hot, green beans cold, green beans in the pot nine days old.

We didn't go hungry.

I used to help Pop in his garden.

You guessed it... I weeded.

I remember Pop explaining how important weeding was.

He said the weeds were stealing food and water from the plants we needed.

Weeds were stealing and giving nothing in return.

Weeds could choke out the plants we did need.

Weeds could change a good vegetable garden into a mess of useless thieves.

Weeds were no damn good and shouldn't be given space.

At the time I thought Pop was just talking about gardening.

But a Pop often sees a bigger picture.

Part of his job of preparing a kid for being on her own.

Maybe Pop was trying to teach me something for life in general.

Weeding is important.

But how did he know about FaceBook?