I hate weeding.

This is the second year for a community garden at the YMCA in our county. Things are going well. We have new gardeners this year, we are building a shed for tools and hoses, and we have increased the planted area by a third. Soon we will be providing extra produce for the local food pantry and setting up a table at the local Farmer’s Market for produce to be available for a donation. Money raised at the Farmer’s Market goes to our local food pantry. Last year we were able to raise $650 for the food pantry with donated produce. The community garden inspired and encouraged another community garden in a nearby town. This year they are up and running with 60 small plots. Yes, things are going well.

The weeds are growing well too. I spend many hours out at the community garden planting in my plots and working around the garden. It seems no matter how much work I do, the weeds always get the best of me. One of the ways I try to keep the weeds under control is to use a mulch of newspapers and compost on the pathways and between rows. I am thankful the city gave the community garden free compost. Free is good, even though I seem to spend quite a bit of time and energy pulling ground up plastic water bottles and plastic bags out of the composted leaves. It is worth it though, and by the end of the growing season, the newspaper is decomposed and ready to till in with the compost. I finally finished planting in the garden and now my attention turns to spreading newspapers and compost...and of course, weeding.

For many reasons, I do not subscribe to a newspaper. I do read newspapers. Several Friends in our meeting drop by their old newspapers for me to read and then recycle. I don’t mind reading news several days old and I hope this saves a tree or two and a bit of money.

I do feel guilty not subscribing to a newspaper though. It is difficult to see the decline of printed news. I constantly weigh my financial and environmental concerns with the concerns of keeping and encouraging this important source of information in the world. It is obvious there is a generational commitment to newspapers. Those who generally bring me newspapers to read and use in the garden are people my parents age and older. The internet changed the world for those of my generation and younger. I found it interesting as I placed newspapers down in my garden this last week that the size of the newspapers from larger cities has decreased by about 2 inches the past year. All of the newspapers have reduced the number of pages they print each day. It takes way more newspapers this year to cover the same amount of area. As I laid out the newspapers in the garden, I thought it seemed unwise for those smaller newspapers to be using smaller print considering the people who still subscribe.

Placing several months of newspapers down at one time in the garden gives me an opportunity to see patterns in headlines. Obviously, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico dominated the news over the past months. Reading about the spill everyday is overwhelming, but something happened as I looked at paper after paper with headlines concerning the spill over a matter of hours. The headline “Mike Pence critical of Obama, green groups after spill” pushed me over the edge. Representative Mike Pence is my representative and holds a senior leadership position in Congress. I pulled that front page out of the mulch pile to take home and re-read. I do that often. My husband accuses me of spending more time reading in the garden than I do hoeing weeds.

In the article, Representative Pence blamed left-wing environmental groups for “seeking to exploit this environmental tragedy and deny the American people access to our domestic reserves offshore.” Pence supports drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but draws the line at the Great Lakes. In other words: “not in my back yard.”

The other front-page article that caught my eye that day was touting the incredible success of the “Double Down Sandwich” from Kentucky Fried Chicken: two pieces of chicken sandwiching bacon and cheese. 540 calories, 32 grams of fat, and a day’s worth of salt. KFC expects to sell its 10 millionth Double Down this month.

Garden time is thinking time. Those headlines made me think.

There is more than enough blame to go around for the oil spill and everyone is quick to find someone else to blame. I don’t see any articles blaming me for the oil spill and I should. This oil spill happened because of a demand for oil to meet the need of those who choose to drive a car, use electricity, eat food, and fly on planes. It takes oil to do most anything these days. It is amazing the amount of oil it takes to support the American lifestyle so many enjoy. I wonder how many gallons of oil it takes for every “Double Down Chicken Sandwich”? When you add the oil needed to grow corn and soybeans, oil to process corn and soybeans into food for chickens, hogs and cows, oil to process these animals into meat or make cheese, oil to transport finished products all over the US to KFC franchises, and oil for someone to drive there to purchase the sandwich, it has to be a significant amount. I read recently that it takes 22 gallons of oil per day to support every soldier deployed in war. It is hard for me to be critical of any of those figures because I do not know how many gallons of oil it takes me to live the way I live. It may not be 22 gallons per day, but I’m sure I would be embarrassed by the actual numbers of gallons it takes to support my lifestyle.

I read complaints every day from people around the Gulf who drive to the beach and find tar balls and oil messing up their recreation time. I read of the bitterness and anger by those whose livelihoods have been destroyed by this man-made disaster. The complaining, the anger, the bitterness all arise out of a frustration with not being able to do anything to “fix” this oil spill, of not being able to quickly and easily stop the destruction.

I don’t seem to be reading much about how my demand for oil to live the way I want to live is part of the problem. I’d like to think my efforts in the community garden or my efforts to live a simpler lifestyle make a difference. But even growing much of my own produce requires oil in many forms. Oil for the compost, oil for the newspapers, oil to grow the plants.....the list seems endless.

I’m not really sure how to respond to this crisis on the shores of the gulf. As I pick out shredded plastic from the compost, I pray for all those affected by my choices and I am reminded I need to be a good steward of every piece of plastic I touch in my daily living. Each newspaper headline reminds me of the pain so many endure on a daily basis, and I pray for them. As I make meals and feed people with the produce I grow, I will thank God for the opportunity to do something to change my life and my community, even if it is just a drop in the ocean.