Weeds Wins!

Gardens attract uninvited plants as Saturday night parties draw crashers. The uninvited are clearly out of place; but, getting them out is not easy. The garden interlopers are pejoratively addressed unkindly. In polite company they are referred to as "weeds". By definition a weed is any plant that voluntarily appears where a gardener does not want it to be. Like the party crasher, it is out of place. However, not all weeds are treated equally.

Happily, an unexpected tomato or columbine seedling will be respectfully assigned another location. Sadly perhaps, crabgrass or storkesbill will be annihilated! Yet, as harsh as the action is against them, weeds never give up the ghost! The reality of triumph seems to be an act of will and shared in the animal kingdom by cockroaches, fleas and mosquitoes. As long as the winds blow, birds fly, insects pollinate and humans stir thing up, weeds will predominate.

Weeds to me are the colonial varieties that the European invaders unloaded on what they called, the new world. New to the conquistadors of various stripes; but, well-known to indigenous peoples who were doing quite nicely before the crashing of the party, so to speak.

I have learned to relax vigilance against weeds. Failing to vanquish weeds, I have adopted a policy of detente, meaning in this context, an attitude of indifference; why fight a loosing battle? There is an acceptance that the presence of unwanted plants is absolute and eternal. Therefore, one has to imagine a state where weeds simply fill the backdrop and are largely unseen and ignored as if they are of another social class. Pay them no notice. What is not recognized, does not exist.

One uninvited species that I can not ignore is Rubus fruticosus, the heavily armed, militantly ubiquitous and brambly Blackberry or Dog Rose. This is a weed on steroids! Blackberry shoots left unchallenged will eventually form a single species vegetative blanket over an entire garden or vacant lot. It tolerates no competition! If a lazy neighbor has a stand, blackberry runners will make their way over or under boundaries and colonize adjacent properties. And political detente with the neighbor becomes a necessity.

As a garden matures, weeds, many of whom are pioneer species, are eliminated quite naturally by shade from ornamentals. Patience wins out. Also, grass weeds take a beating underfoot. Pathways are usually devoid of weeds. I have been seeking without success, Japanese Weeder Ducks. There are various satisfactions and benefits accruing from a such creatures, such as the entertainment inherent in watching weeds disappear and transmigrate into eggs. I could never serve up a duck for dinner! If you hatch ducklings, they will bond and be your friends forever. In the pre-development era, deer would visit my gardens to eat young, tender fox tail and other grass-like shoots. They never bothered ornamentals or vegetables. I and the deer were quite comfortable with the arrangement.

If a gardener insists upon eliminating weeds the effort must be initiated at the earliest stage of growth, when they first sprout and are quite tiny and even cute. The weeds can be eradicated, at least for awhile by simply scraping the soil with a hoe (that doesn't even have to be sharpened.). However, the sprouting usually occurs when temperatures are still low and the soil is very wet and muddy. Only the most determined gardeners among us would take on such torture. I would rather watch movie classics and seep green tea and eat my Italian-style pecan crescent cookies. No matter what is done physically on the soil surface, beneath ground a subterranean cosmos of roots will prevail and keep the gardener busy forever.