"A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill
except for learning how to grow in rows."
-- Doug Larson
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| Wild violet (Johnny jump up) in the woods 5-4-14 |
"When weeds go to heaven,
I suppose they will be flowers."
-- L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl
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| Wild vine in the woods 5-4-14 |
"Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them."
-- A.A. Milne
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| Dandelion in the woods 5-4-14 |
I spent the late afternoon yesterday, camera in hand, trudging through the woods. I went off-trail, up and down hills, dodging briers and low-hanging vines, searching for majesty.
The brooks were babbling. The birds were singing. Majesty was plentiful in the beams of a brilliant sun streaming down on me through the towering, leafless trees, illuminating the coming-alive-ness of the forest all around me.
I was looking for wildflowers, but mostly I found weeds.
Except for the May Apples and Jacks-in-the-Pulpits, the wildflowers were being shy. Apprehensive. After a hard winter, they weren't quite ready to stick their necks out just yet.
Not weeds.
While the "real" flowers were taking their sweet, timid time opening up, the weeds were growing happily and plentifully, running roughshod all over the forest floor,
Weeds are like Nature's little extroverts. Eager and unabashed. Not afraid to show their faces and shout "Look at me! Down here!"
Mother's day is coming, and for many, that means flowers. Some mothers will receive lovely, expensive bouquets and arrangements and hanging baskets purchased from the florist. Others will get last minute grocery store mums wrapped in cellophane. Some might get meticulously cultivated long stemmed roses, and others, tulips snipped from their very own landscaping.
But the luckiest mothers of all, I think, will be given fistfuls of battered dandelions and johnny jump ups, held forth proudly in grubby little bunches by beaming, grubby little children.
A good mother will oooh and aaah over the loveliness of these "flowers" and carefully place them in Dixie cups on the kitchen windowsill and then dutifully water them like prize orchids.
Her eyes may brim with tears, prompting the child to ask "Mommy, what's wrong? Don't you like them?" (translation: "Don't you love me?") And she will hug the child closely and confirm that she absolutely loves and adores both the flowers and the child, not minding (for once) the smear of dirty hand prints across her blouse, or the muddy shoe tracks across her gleaming kitchen floor.
She may secretly pop an extra Claritin or Benadryl to keep her allergies at bay.
And in the future, she may feel a tiny ache in her heart each time the lawn chemical truck saturates the flawless green grass with weed-killer. In the future, no store-bought bouquet will ever mean as much.
In the future, she may spend a late afternoon, camera in hand, trudging through the woods. And she may go off-trail, up and down hills, dodging briers and low-hanging vines, searching for majesty.
And she will find it running roughshod all over the forest floor in the happy, plentiful, grubby little weed-faces stretching sun-ward.
Her eyes may brim with tears.
