Our first house with a yard was owned by a rather controlling landlady who insisted our yard be kept “weed-free.” While initially, I appreciated her attention to detail, I quickly realized that this would be an inordinately difficult (not to mention exhausting) task to fulfill. I was 30 weeks pregnant with my second child when we moved home to Colorado in the heat of early July, and as she demonstrated for me what she meant by “weed-free”, it began to be obvious that she meant also: the johnny-jump ups in the rock boarders, the wild roses growing from underneath our neighbors fence, and patches of “different grass” that didn’t match the Kentucky blue-grass sod that she had carefully installed.
In the two years that we lived there, the struggle against the “weeds” both real and imagined was anxiety inducing and endless. Living in that house, so highly monitored and controlled, felt like trying to take a deep breath while climbing Mount Everest. I could never keep up, and my fear of disappointing my exacting land lady, (who once tried to get me to tell her if my backdoor neighbor had weeds in his yard so she could report him to the city, “he’s not much of a gardener,” she’d say), was growing with each passing interaction.
I wish I could say that all the time I spent maintaining that first yard was what got me started in the garden, but more than anything the constant search for imperfection—the vigilance against weeds or anything remotely resembling one, polluted my summer days and kept me anxiously awaiting a winter season in which I knew I could relax a little. I breathed a sigh of great relief when we bought a house of our own two years later—the heavy yoke of the “weed-free” yard removed from me. But even still, these habits had a hard death ahead of them.
Our new backyard had some lovely raised beds which I intended to use for vegetables, and a border of mulch surrounding them. Those first few months we lived there, weeds kept cropping up in the mulch, and like a faithful gardener, I pulled them. It wasn’t until my daughter’s illness flared once again and the weeds were left to themselves for a few weeks that I realized what I had actually been pulling: Cosmos.
I cringe to think of it now. In my defense, I had no idea what the seedings of cosmos looked like. All I knew was these same plants kept popping up in my mulch borders and they were “out of place” so, as my landlady taught me, I pulled them. I know now it takes time to unravel the rhythms we inherit, even if we are resentful of them and feel forced into them in the first place. When the first flower bloomed and I saw my mistake, I realized that if I had only given myself and my garden time to get to know one another, it would have shown itself to me for the beauty that it truly was all along.
I determined from that moment on to be a different kind of gardener. From then on, every unknown plant in my garden seemed less problematic and more like an opportunity to cultivate beauty. Should this plant stay, or should it go? Do I like it here? Is it beautiful? That first year in our new home I mercilessly pulled many bindweeds that were choking my lawn. I dedicated myself to maintaining an acceptable level of dandelions, but I let the cosmos have their way in my mulch borders and I stopped thinking twice about it. I accepted that they would tickle my legs and be in the way as I harvested my summer squash. I let the place feel wild—and it felt good.
Fast forward to the present day; I bought a house with a lawn full of weeds. Truly, I hesitate to even call it a lawn because the grass patches are few and far between, and the weeds, or any other plant that is not grass, are everywhere in between the patches of dirt from the two dogs that used to live and dig here. The first month of summer it was so dry that we didn’t even need to mow because there was nothing growing, and even the weeds were few are far between. All I wanted in those early summer days was green.
Then we went to Florida for a week on vacation, and when we returned we were stunned to see that our yard had transformed. Through a little rain and warm weather, we returned to tall grass, and weeds that all looked ready to bloom—you see, the truth is that once again, many of my so-called weeds were actually flowers.
Wild oats. Wild sage. Alfalfa. Tiny little alpine purple asters. Of course the Hollyhocks which looks like tall and obstinate weeds with huge leaves unless you know any different. Unless you’ve seen the glory of their three foot tall flower spikes, huge flowers feeding the hummingbirds and butterflies. Of course there are many others which I have not yet identified. But I discovered that I have two golden current bushes. And the chokecherries in the back corner of my garden remind me of the ones that used to hang from my backdoor neighbors yard, dripping their fruit tantalizingly to my side of the fence, tempting me to make jam and popsicles and wild cherry syrup. (Which I did—sharing some with my neighbor of course.)
Seeing the wildflowers for what they are really are requires a kind of joyful surrender—a kind of freeing laziness perhaps. For the moments I allow them to be, I decide that control is overrated, and tell the voice of the micromanaging landlady in my head to put a sock in it. I discover to my joy that surprising beauty flourishes where I least expect it.
Good things take time. And its worth noting that some of my favorite things weren’t always good at first—or at least they didn’t always seem that way to me. Perhaps this is a universal truth? Perhaps there are moments every day of my life when I get to ask the question, is this a weed? Or is this a wildflower?
When the children of a friend of mine come for a summer picnic in my yard, they gather fistfuls of tiny blooms from every corner of my patch of weeds. They arrange elaborate bouquets in colored glass vases and old jam jars, and behind their gleaming eyes all I see are wildflowers.
Weeds or Wildflowers?
thank you Grace!
Much truth in this!
I agree - perfection is overrated, especially for moms of young children.
Enjoy those beautiful children, you have many more important things to do other than pulling "weeds"!