I love to weed and I love to read. In the best of circumstances weeding reacquaints me with my garden, and reading can so totally occupy my being that I forget almost everything else. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the subject of my Spring SDG, was my constant companion in this time of pandemic in my readings and in my garden.

       There is a rhythm to my weeding as I bend, kneel, pull and haul. I am absorbed in the act itself and in the order my labor produces. I inhale the sharp smells of the pulled weeds, the feel of the loosened soil, and the delicate details of this expanse of plants, visible again. Holmes’ words to his alumni class in 1913, “Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum,” became a reprieve, like the lanky catchweed, stinging nettle, and common dandelion, offering a better perspective away from the isolation and anxiety of this Covid-induced crisis.

       My garden, with a view of the Los Angeles city skyline, gently slopes downward on one side of a boxwood hedge, bordered by a broad swath of lawn and rosemary patches. The bank is a work in progress, refurbished, nourished and replanted often. It is here that all kinds of creepers, volunteers, and coarse leaf devils move in after the winter rains, to propagate happily.  And here Holmes’ words from 1913 so ap-propriately apply to my weeding efforts in 2020. He writes, “Life is action, the use of one’s powers. [And] to use them to their height is our joy and duty, so it is the one end that justifies itself.” My action, to remove the squatters that took over the slope and to stop worrying, was a joy, a duty and a justification of great satisfaction, even if this action did not rise to the level of the Justice’s intent.