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Weed WhackingSeptember 06, 2005 After giving the horses lunch -- three get grain, and all five get hay because the pastures are so parched -- and doing my usual midday chores, I set to whacking the weeds along one side of Allie's paddock. The manure pile backs up to the other side of the fence, so these weeds grow lushly even in near-drought conditions. Allie considers the weeds inedible; they aren't unsightly, but in their profusion they can interfere with the juice in the electric wire that keeps the horses from busting through the fence or, more likely, chewing on it. There were two kinds of weed, neither of whose names I know. The ragweedy stuff came up easily by the roots. The broad-leafed succulent-looking stuff was more tenacious: I had to whack the bottom of the stalks and leave the roots in the ground. My weed whacker was the kitchen knife that we keep in the tackroom mostly for opening beer bottles at the end of the day. Versatile tools, those kitchen knives. Jim, Ginny's husband, happened over and asked what I was planning to make. I didn't think fast enough to say "a big salad," and it was another ten minutes before I thought of Rapunzel's father stealing rampion from the witch's garden. Behind him a big Caterpillar was preparing the ring for the loads of sand that will start arriving tomorrow. (Most of the current sand seems to be permanently suspended in the air.) "Some husbands," he noted, "have to buy their wives a thirty- or forty-thousand-dollar car every couple of years," whereas his wife wants a dressage ring with state-of-the-art footing for about the same price. I grinned. At the far end of the back pasture, which is currently missing the short fenceline it shared with the old ring, another project is under way, complete with sand, concrete foundation, many long posts and beams with grooves cut into them, and several large construction vehicles. This is the boat-shed-to-be, which, though Ginny is also an avid sailor, everyone knows is Jim's project. The boat shed and the dressage ring . . . Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, I thought at once, having been a major fan of Henry Adams in my twenties. I'd forgotten that the work was subtitled "A Study in 13th Century Unity," but do dimly remember that it explored the synergetic coherence of reason and intuition, science and faith, male and female. Some day maybe I will write The Boat Shed and the Dressage Ring and dedicate it to the Lobdells.
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