There is an hour more of visible sun before civil twilight begins, but I've had enough.  Today my worktrade task was planting bulbs. I didn't think it would be too hard on my thumb (a probable avulsion fracture following the window incident), and agreed without hesitation.

The window incident should have gone much more smoothly.  I've opened that window plenty of times, and yes, it has always been heavy, but no, I have never before opened it with zealous fervor, I suppose.  The moment was a matter of urgency.  I had just discovered that there was something which needed hurling out the window, that I couldn't bear to have sitting on the counter for a moment longer, and the opportunity to do it had arrived like the last train home at night.  There was passion involved, the triumph of truth over deception, light over darkness - it was the holy war between good and evil, at the time.  There is no reason that should make any sense now, but the main idea is that I chose angels over demons, I think, and that it was of so much weight and significance, that my thumb has continued to ache and swell like the memory of a lost love.  There is only one particular way that it hurts, that being when I do something which exactly resembles the act of spiritual cleansing at the window.  It's been a little over a week, and I've seen zero improvement in my ability to painlessly enact unbridled sacred passion.  Playing viola is fine, yoga is fine, writing with a pen is fine.  Gardening should have been fine.

 "We just need to do the weeding first!"   My gardening buddy, Meg, led me down the hill, where I saw the side of the road lush and overflowing with vines and grass.  I was confused, "by weeding you mean..."

"...we're going to pull everything out of the ground."

"Everything."

"Yeah, everything!"

It turned out that before any bulbs could be planted, we had to make the ground ready.  And in order to make the ground ready, we had to tear it up completely.  We had to destroy it so thoroughly that nothing which was currently thriving would stand a chance at survival.  It seemed harsh.  I clenched my fists around ropes of stem and root and leaf and threw my body back, ripping them out of the soil over and over again.  It seemed so completely impossible to get everything out.  The ground appeared to be formed entirely of the roots of weeds, and each one I pulled up left hairy tangles in the ground.  I reached for sprigs of grass hundreds of times, and thousands less than what is needed.  Bulbs were a stupid idea.  The vines were beautiful as they were, the overgrowth natural, but now - now it was a wreck.  Earthworms and garbage that were invisible under the giant green leaves came up writhing over the surface.  The sight was crap, total crap.

"Wow, that looks great, Karen!"  Meg was inexplicably happy that I was ruining everything.  I didn't want to seem disapproving, but the project felt like declaring war without end. 

"These vines are going to come back, you know."

"Yeah, we'll have to keep up the weeding even after the bulbs get going!  How's your thumb?"