Nobody plants the weeds

 (photos taken 7.29.10)

Grace and I picked raspberries and blueberries at a friends recently. Grace lost interest pretty quickly, more interested in feeding the chicken clover heads and talking to our friend, Casey, who was weeding some of the nearby vegetable gardens. I was a couple gardens over and  could hear snippets of Grace's continuous questions and Casey's patient answers. 

(photo taken 7.29.10)

One of her answers that has stuck with me,

rattling around my mind,

"No one needs to plant the weeds."

(photo taken 7.29.10)

I'm sure there is a magical far-away land where the zucchini is weighing down the plants with no one to pick them, juicy tomatoes run amok, various herbs gone wild and fields of carrots feeding herds of rabbit, to say nothing of azaleas, rhododendron, dusty miller and mums. But not here.

Here, we thoughtfully pick seeds from the store while ignoring the half empty seed packet at the back of the junk drawer, carefully cultivate seedlings indoors in April and May as it's still too cold to plant outdoors, prepare fertilized, tilled beds for the fragile growth, covering them at the slightest frost warning, and weed the garden. 

Always weeding the garden. Because the weeds will come.

"No one needs to plant the weeds."

And if you want the good stuff, the pretty stuff, the tasty stuff, you have to weed the garden.Unless you like a yard full of Creeping Charlie with some grass thrown in, a flower garden filled with thistle, or a vegetable garden choked with weeds, you have to remove the undesirable, remove the chaff, separate the wheat from the tares.

You can't garden through omission.

"No one needs to plant the weeds,"

but they'll keep showing up anyway.

If you don't' choose to be proactive

(photo taken 7.29.10, 2 weeks later)

the weeds will begin to choke out the growth so carefully cultivated.

 "No one needs to plant the weeds."

It's a warning, a charge to be careful,

be diligent, pay attention.

It's a lot like life.

Don't mind me - I'm just weeding out loud.