16. Is That A Weed?
Life Lessons of a Backyard Gardener
NOTE: This is Chapter 16 of my online book. Enjoy.
In an early season of Saturday Night Live, Steve Martin and Bill Murray played two bumpkins who stumble across something strange. The “something” remained off camera; we only see Martin and Murray reacting to it, riffing repeatedly on variations of “What the hell is that?” Which seems off the wall at first, then really funny, then tedious -- until the skit mercifully ends.
Decades later, I swear they were playing gardeners looking at a weed.
Many years ago, a strange herby visitor arrived in my yard out of the blue. Or should I say “cropped up”. -- because my yard and garden produced crops of this stuff for years afterward. I thought it looked like an anemic jade plant, but it certainly was not jade. Whatever its DNA heritage, it knew how to reproduce. Within a season, it would aspire to fill every flower basket, every pot of herbs, every raised bed, every crack in every concrete slab. I needed to do nothing except watch the show unfold every summer.
And so I instinctively branded it a weed, because, hey, that’s what weeds do -- they arrive uninvited, and find the open places that you would prefer remain unexplored by leafy intrusions. And I suppose that suggests a reasonable definition: Weeds are uninvited plants that override your grand plans. And there are life lessons in those simple words.
Weeds are plants. They aren’t alien intruders. They aren’t zombies or bunnies that have learned to photosynthesize. They aren’t the spawn of an evil presence from another realm. They are plants, with leaves and stems and roots. And aspirations. They come in many shapes, varying aggressive tendencies, and different degrees of difficulty. Some weeds arrive with the intent to show who’s boss. Others mind their own business, occupying obscure foundations and corners of the yard. Some are resigned to being pulled, while others embed themselves in soil like a fence post in concrete. Whatever their attitude, and wherever they prefer to call home, they are all just plants -- living things with roots and leaves, often with flowers and fruit.
But weeds are also uninvited. They just show up one day -- most days, really. They have no sense of decorum or etiquette. They are presumptuous squatters, transient, reserved visitors at best, permanent bullies of the neighborhood at worst. And so we discover the essence of weediness: I didn’t invite this plant, and so I deem it to be a weed.
But I will share a secret if you promise not to tell anyone: I have a lot of perennial plantings that started as weeds. You heard me. Some are now prized shrubs that accent the landscape with grace and dignity… two stately holly trees, a couple well-shaped junipers, a few boxwoods, a few beautiful but 100% volunteer crape myrtles, a whole series of dawn redwoods that I have cultivated and gifted to friends, not to mention a few shrubby things that remain part of my plant family despite remaining anonymous… and, lest I forget, the wild blackberries at the edge of the property… and what is now my asparagus patch. Then there is the maple tree over on the side that my daughter rescued as a seedling… and the “red maple” on the opposite side that decided to not be red after all... and the ash tree that now provides wonderful shade at the south end of the pool patio, having courageously survived an attack from emerald ash borers a few years ago… and the occasional reappearance of fennel, dill, morning glories, four o’clocks and cypress vine, all welcomed, redirected and integrated.
All of these entered this world as uninvited guests. But they are anything but weeds now.
So what is a weed? A weed is a plant that you don’t like because it violates your plans, unaware of the worldview that you maintain of your landscape. It crosses the line, it invades your space, it has the temerity to get in the way. In other words, a weed is a weed only if you can’t get over yourself long enough to appreciate an alternate path. The moment you consider such a plan, one that lets you discover the plant’s potential role in your life, it is no longer a weed. It’s an asset. The weed didn’t change -- you did. And so there is no objective answer to our original question. Is that a weed? It depends on your attitude -- your willingness to accept what the universe wants to give you.
That stuff that overwhelmed my landscape for a number of years is called purslane. Most people consider it a weed. It gets in their way. But it is edible and makes a fine addition to a salad, adding texture and a bright “pop”. Some cultures treat it as a crop. It’s a perfectly fine, tasty, nutritious plant, if you choose to view it that way. You can continue to view your purslane as a problem -- a weed. And truth be told, most of mine gets pulled and recycled into the compost, because I can’t eat that much purslane. But you can choose to see it differently, along with many other things that pass through your life every day. There are exceptions, of course. One person’s pollinator magnet fennel plant can be another person’s anaphylactic nightmare. For the latter, it isn’t a matter of “seeing it differently” — it’s a question of life or death.
But examples of reason entering this analysis are infrequent. The average distaste for weeds is decidedly emotional, a matter of imposition of will and/or accepted doctrine, even if the doctrine is fundamentally tribal, or lives a life of stolen valor under the label of science.
For my part, I like plants. If a plant is willing to co-exist peacefully with me, with no obvious desire to conquer and humiliate my landscape or the landscapes around me, I will generally welcome it and give it a place to stay — even a few that have been branded unwanted foreigners by most of the gardening world. I don’t do a lot of garden tours for this reason. My property would be a horror movie for those who live in fear of what has been branded “other” by the tribal leaders. And I have no desire to frighten.
We live in a particularly fraught, divisive time, with opinion leaders sprouting like — if you will forgive the term — weeds. Humans naturally seek the safety of tribal association, often willing to bend toward ideas that range from distasteful to dystopian as a fair price for membership in this or that group. Over a century ago, many such people branded all of my grandparents, fresh off the boat from Italy, as weeds — dirty, undesirable, mass consumers of garlic, lazy, monstrous, takers of jobs. More than anything, these uninvited usurpers affected comfortable concepts of life as people had known them for a generation or two. We are easily duped into such nativist thinking — that the status quo as we know it is a universal, static Truth. It is comforting, even validating, to believe that our current choices are worth conserving. No doubt, they sometimes are. But they are never perfect or complete. There is always room for enrichment. And some weeds can enrich your life.
Is that a weed? It is not for me to say. But maybe it is time to reconsider some of the things that you have branded as weeds. Yes, maybe some of those weeds are plants. But maybe some of them are birds. Or ideas. Or even people.
Weeds are in the eye of the beholder.
Chapter 17 - (Coming Soon!)