Weeds in the Garden

By Volodymyr Kish

When I last called my cousin Hryts in Pidkamin, he was sitting in his backyard planning what his garden would look like this year.  This was not as straightforward an affair as one might imagine, since Hryts approached the design of his garden much the same way that Michelangelo prepared for his opus on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

“Putting together a garden,” Hryts once told me, “is not just a matter of seeds, manure and turning the ground over!  You have to know the nature of the soil in every square centimetre of your plot.  You have to know the history of what has been planted in each spot in years past. You have to take into account what kind of winter and spring you have had.  You have to take a close look at the behaviour of the bugs, the birds and the animals in the vicinity of your planting ground.  And most importantly, you have to spend some time in your garden before you start doing anything in it, to get a feel for its state of being.”

Needless to say, as so often happens when I talk to Hryts, I was sorely puzzled.

“What do you mean by the garden’s state of being?” I asked.

“Echh, my young turnip!” he exclaimed, “You’ve been living in the city for too long and have lost touch with your peasant roots.  The land, like us, is a living thing. It breathes, it drinks, it needs nourishment. Each plot of land has its own character and personality.  If you treat it with love and respect, it will repay you bountifully. Abuse it or ignore it and it will make your life miserable.”

“Hmm!” I replied. “That sounds like an interesting eco-friendly theory, but that’s not what I called you about.  I am as always, deeply troubled by the deteriorating political situation in Ukraine.  The economy is getting worse by the day, the government appears to be deliberately stirring the pot between the extreme nationalists on the one side and the Russified reactionaries on the other, the Ukrainian Parliament has faded into irrelevancy and the oligarchs have continued to shamelessly pillage what’s left of Ukraine’s wealth.”

“Weeds!” he retorted loudly, “Yep…that’s what it is - weeds.”

“Weeds?” I exclaimed, again sorely puzzled.

“Yes, weeds!” he replied emphatically.  “What you have in Ukraine is what you get in your garden when you don’t looks after it properly – weeds. They take over everything; they crowd out anything useful; they destroy the order, symmetry and productivity of the land; and above all they are ugly as sin.”

“Hmm…” I uttered, trying to think of something intelligent to say, “I see what you are getting at. So what is one to do with these…er…weeds?”

“There is only one thing to do.  You must plough well and start over.  You must remember that most weeds have deep roots.  When Ukraine became independent, all that happened was that you cut off the tops of the weeds, but the roots were still well entrenched.  Even during the Orange Revolution, we didn’t dig down deep enough and now the bur’yan has taken over the garden with a vengeance!”

“I see,” I replied, “But what about Yushchenko? If the current crop of politicians is nothing but weeds, what was Yushchenko?”

“Why, that is obvious my dear pumpkinhead,” he chuckled, “Yushchenko was a defective sterile plant – he looked good but was totally infertile – he couldn’t propagate anything of use. The weeds then had an easy time taking over again.  It is highly ironic that he fancied himself a beekeeper, the historic agent for pollination and fertility when in fact he was the opposite.”

As usual, Hryts’ folk wisdom born of centuries of practical peasant wisdom once again clarified my habitual confusion over the state of things in Ukraine.