Thistles

This morning I was attacking the weeds in my garden.  Last year I broke my leg.  This kept me out of the garden entirely.  All the crops died. Surrounding native grasses mounted and invasion into the tilled area, spreading their rhizomes by the yard and intertwining them into a mat guaranteed to foul the tines of a tiller in a few feet.  Weeds then populated the spaces the grass had not.  I faced an untillable field of grass, wild mustard, foxtails and thistles which could only be put back into service as a garden by hand pulling the tall weeds.  As I was removing the thistles, I ruminated about Theophilus Thistle, the successful thistle sifter.  All I had heard was he "thrust thrice three thousand thistles through the thick of his thumb."  That was a greater quantity than all the thorns in both of my hands.  But I did not know the period of time Theophilus set this record.  Was 9000 thistles a lot, or an amazingly small number to accrue in a lifetime of thistle sifting?  After all, Theophilus was successful.  I imagined he was the heir of a thistle sifting business, being named Thistle.  He could have been the scion of many generations pursuing this enterprise.  Perhaps he became famous by inventing thornproof gloves. By the time I had exhausted speculation on the circumstances surrounding the tongue twister, my wheelbarrow was piled high with weeds.

After dumping the barrow, I began to contemplate the business of thistle sifting in general.  This led me to remember a particularly hot afternoon in the summer of 1960.  I had dreamed of living and working on a farm all during my childhood.  Since I was lazier than the average child, my parents decided to teach me farming is hard work.  They sent me to Minnesota to spend the summer on my aunt and uncle's farm.  I was ecstatic.  This particular day, Uncle Ben informed me that a 40 acre field of oats had thistles growing in it.  When he harvested and sold the crop, the price he received would be reduced if there were thistle seed with the grain.  He had figured out how to prevent this from happening.  He welded a small, sharp blade to a rod.  My cousin David and I were to carry one of these into the field the thistles had invaded.  Working carefully, we were to find every thistle in bloom and with a swift diagonal chop, remove its head. With no blossom, the plant could not make seed.

David and I worked our way into a patch of thistle and began chopping. The blades were excellent for the job.  When we had curtailed one infestation, we spotted another one.  The temperature climbed into the nineties. We kept chopping until we saw no more thistles to execute.  I could see  salt on my arms from drying sweat as we trudged back to the farmhouse.  It was almost dinner time.  We were thirsty so we made Kool-Aid to drink before the meal.  We drank two pitchers in fifteen minutes.