You know it’s Easter when the newspaper boy drops a special edition 48-page Jem & Fix catalog in wide format, with the proclamation “open all days 8-19”.
You know it’s Easter when Coop 365 sells Mardi Gras rice at a bargain price, to make room for the Easter snowballs, chocolate bunnies, lamb chops and special brew.
You know it’s Easter when the battle to have the most sleepovers in the shortest time starts with your school-age children, and Aula overflows with requests to register for summer vacation.
But the surest sign that Easter is upon us is the endless line of passenger cars with full trailers that stop and blink to the right to enter the recycling site Over Kæret, colloquially known as the “genneren”.
The atmosphere is hectic and expectant, almost cheerful. The air vibrates with impatience as the booms come down right in front of him in front, and you have to wait another 45 seconds to enter the square.
Everything must be driven away; today rather than tomorrow. Withered Christmas trees. Expired soccer goals. Bikes that have become too small. Garden furniture infested with algae. Barberry hedge (ugh). Dusty mattresses. Slimy fallout from birch trees. And bag following bag of mixed waste that has accumulated in corners, both inside and out, over the winter.
Everything takes place in a relatively civilized manner, as long as you can accept that all parking rules cease when you enter the square. There are only a few sarcastic remarks regarding garden waste, when “someone” unloads in the middle of it all, and doesn’t drive all the way to the wall.
We wash the board clean
Yes. At Easter, the people in the detached houses carry out what resembles a ritual cleansing.
We wash the slate clean and let the house and garden be resurrected as another bird Phoenix.
The growing season is our new religion. Gone is Good Friday without lit candles in the church, and the flag at half-mast. The roar of the organ is replaced with the sound of the chainsaw cutting through the trunk of the tree that has been waiting since October.
It happens to me too. It is Easter. And I know it.
For now, the season starts with a chronic guilty conscience. Hatch conscience. I also live in a detached house. I have also hauled away rubbish. But unlike all other recycling site-frequenting homeowners (I assume), I simply hate going to the garden. I hate weeding. Weeding is probably one of the most emotionally contrasting, uncontrollable phenomena that exists.
Weeding is equal parts satisfying and depressing at the same time.
It’s insanely hard to get started. My mental barrier is as high as the Aalborg tower. And if I finally get three or four square meters sorted out, the long captive arms of the manta ray come whistling back at rocket speed.
I’ll shoot, it grows back within the first 30 minutes following I’m done. And if in a utopian world I can be lucky enough to get to the end of the garden, then I can start over at the other end. WTF.
All spring and summer I go and think “I should weed, I should weed, I should weed”.
It stands in 30 cm high stems. Along with the hedge. Between the bikes. Between the tiles. The sidewalk. What don’t the neighbors think? – I think. The children refuse to help. They just jump on the trampoline. And my husband always has bigger and more important larger-than-life hanging parties outside.
Furthermore, he also focuses a lot less on what other people think than I do.
Why do you have a garden, Vibeke? Good question. It’s a long story that goes all the way back to 1967. We’ll save that for another good time.
Sigh. Long live the growing season. Long live Sisyphus. Let the weeding begin!
Vibeke Falden is an artist, singer and music producer. She is the creator behind the parental satirical universe Perfekt Mor and is currently current with the song “Kære Aula”.
2024-03-29 18:16:16
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