It’s my birthday! And to celebrate I’m pulling weeds for my dad in his vast garden. My phone’s weather app reports 86 degrees, but it feels hotter. Maybe that’s just the 91% humidity talking.

Some may say I’m crazy to be gardening in the mid-day sun on my day off. My husband for instance thinks I’m out of my gourd. But he works all day in the heat doing physical labor at his job. I spend my workdays on my butt in front of a computer in an over-air-conditioned office doing work that amounts to “herding cats,” as my former colleague was fond of saying. I love my job, but today is my day. I don’t want to relax indoors looking at a screen of any kind.

So here I am pulling weeds in the noon sun, sweating profusely, getting dirt under my nails. Ahhh.

I can look behind me and see I’ve accomplished something. I can look ahead and see the end of the row and the end of the task. Since it’s not my garden I don’t have to worry about the weeds coming back next week. Also since it’s not my garden (which is a meager backyard mix of flowers, vegetables, and herbs, struggling in urban subsoil) the soil is glorious from years of tending—loose dark loam with the faintest scent of manure and compost.

Weeds come up easily with a small tug. The soil crumbles and falls readily from the fibrous roots. The sunshine pours down deliciously on my shoulders. And the tomatoes and corn loom over me green, lush, and full of promise.

It seems right. I’ve been pulling weeds somewhere for most of my life, and this is one of the gardens where it all started.

When I get overheated I get a drink from the same kitchen faucet I drank from the first 18 years of my life. Sitting at the kitchen table, I have an urge to call my best friend from high school, just as I would have 30 years ago.

I go back out to pick raspberries in the cool shade, and remind myself again how much more fruit is gathered when one looks at a variety of angles, how fewer thorns are encountered with patient picking, and, of course, how sweet the berries are. Tonight when I close my eyes, I will see raspberry branches, as I always do when I pick produce for more than a few minutes.

The world is still on fire. Tomorrow I’ll return to social media and read the paper, and be horrified, cynical, confused.

But today is my day and it’s a good day from here in the garden:  A productive one. A day to think about what’s good and full of promise. A day to celebrate my imperfect life, in a week to celebrate my imperfect country, in a life bent on celebrating this imperfect but fascinating world.

*The title is a nod to “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams, but my wheelbarrow was blue and the chickens were all down in the barn.