Some are planted - cabbage, corn, potatoes, radishes, and the like. While other growths seem to invite themselves to the soft soil and food.
Maybe that's why the biggest job in planting a garden isn't planting the seeds, it's protecting them.
Journalism took me to Pierre, South Dakota for three years and a city tradition involved planting petunias along the curbs on both sides of the main streets through town.
It was planted in a day-long blitz. Then a city water truck would shower them with water and adoptive gardeners would tend to the plucky petunias well-being.
Looking to have some fun, with an alliterative story about Piere's pleasant petunias; I set out to interview gardeners the day of the big plant. One of the gardeners took his job seriously, "It's easy and fun to be out here today," he told me, "when the cameras are rolling. The real dedication comes in the heat of the summer when we need to weed it. There's no news coverage for that."
You know, he was right. While I did capture some video and still shots of the blooming flowers, I never did a story about the petunia protection police.
Real gardeners know (and I can't claim to be one) it's weeding, watering, and loving care for the crop making them grow.
Left unchecked, the weeds rise up. Weeds seem heartier, tougher, and more resilient than the plants we hope grow big and tall.It seems to me if a horticulture scientist could develop a hybrid grass with the genes of a weed - it could be the perfect lawn.
Weeds seem to outlast everything else during a drought.
Weeds grow overnight. A statement anyone could make who had to pull weeds from between patio bricks.
Some weeds look like flowers. In fact, weeds can be flowers. Weeds are primarily defined as something growing where it's not wanted.
Those farm fields you see with corn stalks sprouting up between soybean plants? It's not corn then, but weeds. Orchids in a rose garden could be considered weeds.
It's something to consider in the garden of our life. Are we weeding, feeding, and watering the precious petunias in our life?
Or do we water everything indiscriminately?
Sometimes we might be so hurried in the process of weeding and pruning that we miss out on the beauty and wonder of flowers in unexpected places.
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