Every year at this time, I get obsessed with gardening. I have a wonderful God-like moment in early spring where I feel like my yard is under control and I know what I’m doing, but experience had taught me that this is hubris. The more complacent I get about the yard, the sneakier nature will be in undermining me, all in quest—it feels, anyway—to humble me.
Being humbled by bugs and voles is a particularly spectacular kind of humbling. I am smarter (I’m pretty sure that’s true), but there are so many of them. Anyway, we have put in raised beds this year in an attempt to stop the voles and gophers from eating everything I plant. It’s a lot like a king building a fortress to stop invading forces. I understand these kings now, the ancient ones who built castles on hilltops surrounded with moats and pointy sticks. How anxious they must have been all the time—and how angry. Fortresses are well worth the price of a more peaceful state of mind.