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📿 Jiggle Them Out Of The Soil

📿 Jiggle Them Out Of The Soil

These maple shoots are a metaphor.

Adreanna Limbach's avatar
Adreanna Limbach
Jul 05, 2024
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The Laundry
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📿 Jiggle Them Out Of The Soil
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Maple; Hannah Borger Overbeck, 1915

Hello you, Adreanna here with this week’s dispatch of The Laundry —

When I’m lucky enough to go play in the dirt I find myself pulling maple shoots out by the dozens. 

It’s become a daily practice of sorts, grabbing the base of their fledgling stems and jiggling them out by the root. We have maple saplings growing anywhere that they’re able to eke out an inch of soil. There are maples growing in our rosemary pots and in the corners of our gutters. Maples growing in the cracks of our stairs and between the wide planks of our deck.

I sometimes imagine what our house would look like if it were abandoned for twenty years. I envision maple trees growing up through our foundation, with branches breaking through windows. To love this house is to commit to culling the maples before they grow destructive. 

To love this house is to commit to culling the maples before they grow destructive.

This is the thought that got me thinking about pulling these maple shoots…

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