Weeds in the Garden
Today on my way home I sat in the truck for a few moments looking at the grass and sky before going inside -- sometimes this is my only connection with the outdoors and when the temperatures are reasonable and it's not raining on me I try to make the most of it. That's when I noticed that the courtyard in front of my apartment building is full of little yellow flowers and various weeds that are intermixed with the grass. And that got me to thinking, which is a dangerous thing to do...
I remembered back in my teens I would be forced at near gunpoint each Spring to go outside and fertilize the lawn, bushes, and trees. We had 10-10-10 ("triple ten"), whatever that is, for the lawn and Miracle-Gro in various manifestations (liquid, feeding sticks, etc.) for the trees, bushes, and monkey grass. My parents were downright anal about making certain that the yard got properly fertilized and then was sufficiently watered so the triple ten and other crud didn't burn the grass. We also had Roundup which, to the uninitiated, is a very effective weed eradicator. This stuff would kill whatever you sprayed it on within 24 hours. I got to use that a lot as well.
So where on earth am I going with this? I'm sitting in my truck looking at the grass and having flashbacks to 25 years ago when I was fertilizing the good stuff and snuffing out the bad. Here's the thought that I was stuck on: exactly who decided what was a nice plant and what was a weed? Is there some kind of definitive list of weeds out there? Do we have the Weed Police who itemize, categorize, and publish a most wanted list? Near as I can tell, they're all plants and God put them here in various forms just like He did with us, to celebrate the diversity of life. Why are the little yellow flowers weeds while the slightly bigger yellow flowers are daisies and zinnias? Who decided that the little plant with the spherical, white feather top that flies away when you blow on it is a weed? Go out into nature. Forests, plains, hills, everything is covered with tall grass and what we would consider weeds. Nature really is just a lot of grass, weeds, and trees. When did these other plants start disturbing us so much that we needed to use known carcinogens to eradicate them? Or for that matter, when did they start disturbing us so much that we felt the need to eradicate them at all?
And then it hit me. We don't stop with the plant kingdom -- we carry it on with ourselves. People sometimes refer to layoffs, breakups, etc., as "pruning the tree" or "weeding the garden," especially when talking about someone unpopular or someone who has fallen out of favor. I know firsthand how it feels to be sent away from something you love because you were unappreciated while doing it. It's not a good feeling. And I guess that's where the weeds have it easy, because they don't understand what's happening when the trowel digs down and they get uprooted. We do.
Maybe people are too caught up in beauty. A lush forest with a babbling brook and waterfall makes for a scene worthy of a photograph. Your back lawn that hasn't been mowed in two months is an eyesore. Why? They probably have a lot of the same plants in both areas. We see a fallen cypress tree in the swamp with a bird perched on it and someone's diving for a camera. We see a fallen cypress tree in your front yard with a bird perched on it and people are asking when you're going to get that cut up and hauled away and, by the way, make sure you get the tree stump ground up so the grass will cover up where the tree was. The beauty of nature becomes the eyesore of the block. Perhaps it's the tribal mentality at work. We are all the same, we must all be the same, if we are not all the same then there is no identity. We must have green grass with no weeds. We must have no sickly trees. We must be thin. We must do something about age lines. We must conform to the status quo. Or else? Well, then you're a weed.
So before you take the triple ten out to fertilize your lawn (literal or metaphorical) and then hit the weeds with Roundup, be sure to decide what is a weed and what isn't; one day you might be rounded up yourself. As for me, I don't see any weeds in the courtyard, just some tiny yellow flowers that add some color to an otherwise drab green turf.
