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A Happy Kind Of Idiot

I am watching hazel leaves shimmy in a breeze, they are keeping time with the buzz of nettle stings that run from my fingertips to my elbows. It feels like I'm wearing gloves made of needles; why didn't I just wear gloves to clear the nettles from the raspberry hedge? But I like to know the plants, how they grow, how they smell, how they stain and sting, what bugs shelter in their leaves, what grubs and gastropods nestle at the roots. How the roots sneak under weedblocks, moon-pale, and over open ground where they are purplish, bullish. 
I like the work to affect, I like interactive life. 
It has a little pain and a lot of interest. 
Not all the nettles are gone, of course, some must be left to house caterpillars, and they are a healthy vegetable for people too. Today’s crop is for compost though, to feed the soil, the miracle stuff from which this abundance grows. How could I not wish to be close to that? 
At home I have a shower, scrub my sore hands- and still I smell like earth. This delight, this connection, is deeper than the discomfort.
And the next morning I pick a bowl of rib leaf plantain to brew a healing balm. The curious experiment is done; idiocy subsides, happiness holds on. 



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