It’s been a weird year. (Oh, sorry. I should have started with the caveat that I would introduce this post with a Magnificent Understatement.)

For starters there was the COVID. I was reminiscing just yesterday morning about how I used to go to the local library and peruse the shelves, TOUCH THE BOOKS, and not even think twice about how much fun that was. We used to eat free samples at Costco, high five strangers at hockey games and plan vacations with hotels and amusement parks. We even used to think that the United States was relatively harmless.

On a personal note, we sold a business which changed my job from going in to an office regularly to exclusively working from home. This happened to coincide with the whole world #stayinghome so at first it just was part of the General Weirdness. Then everyone that had camped out in my house with me for those two months went back to their regularly scheduled programming, but with face masks and lots and lots of hand sanitizer.

At first, it was pretty weird being Alone In The House Again, but I got used to it because I have a certificate in Introvert Skills. I still went for lots of long walks, because that was A Pandemic Recreation Highlight that I liked. I shopped for groceries (without free samples anywhere) and learned to do pretty much everything, including some grocery shopping, online.

At the beginning of 2020, we had also moved into a new/different house, under cover of a lot of snow. It’s only been about seven months here, but let’s just say, I’m pretty familiar with all the insides of this house. We’ve made changes to suit us better and to make it feel like Home. Most of the square footage of the house gets inspected daily, especially since I got a FitBit and get reminded to complete 250 steps at ten minutes to every hour. I do a couple laps up and down the stairs, check for boogeymen in the bedrooms and pee in the downstairs toilet. If I excel, I get rewarded with a little fireworks celebration on my left wrist when I hit 10,000 steps (not for peeing.)

All this is to say, I seem to be taking the Stay (in the) Home thing kind of seriously, much to the detriment of my yard. Unlike all those other teal, emerald and lime thumbed folks out there who stormed the greenhouses in Spring 2020, I did only my bare minimum of planting lots of tomatoes and a few other plants that would mostly die under my watch.

And then I dug my heels in about the weeds.

All around this “new” house of ours are plenty of gravel beds, the kind that harbour weeds like they were hostages in a Die Hard movie. To add to the matter, these weeds have some kind of Stockholm Syndrome where they don’t want to be released. And NOTHING is so unsatisfying as pulling out the TOP of a weed, knowing you’ve guaranteed its roots to multiply in perpetuity. So I just kinda gave up trying.

But a funny thing has happened. I’m starting to enjoy the weeds. Well, okay, not the weeds exactly, but certainly their tenacity. I mean weeds have this Amazing Ability to Grow Anywhere.

And also: Weeds Have No Shame. We live on a corner lot with one of those gravel beds right there for everyone to inspect as they walk by. There are plenty of weeds already camouflaging the rocks, but there is One Dandelion in particular that just has some attitude. Every day, she stands a little taller and gets a little yellower and I swear, has one leaf bent over one hip. I tell myself that I should go pull (her) out, I make reminder notes in my daily planner to do it, I write freaking blog posts about it this damn dandelion.

But: I kinda wanna see how far she’s gonna take this, y’know. And I’m not exactly going anywhere (especially the United States), so I might as well have something to watch out my front window. If there’s something that needs to be admired right now it’s the ability to flourish in less than optimal circumstances.