Know your weeds

I’ve learned the flowers can be weeds too.  My Mom and I had some alyssum bloom and flourish and as the years went by it turned wild.  It took over the flower beds and grew little spines that would leave a rash on my wrist when we started trying to eradicate them.  And don’t get me started on what a pain it’s been trying to keep the shasta daisies to a reasonable size, or the creeping thyme from choking out the rock crest.  There’s also the gorgeous snap dragons that come up from seed between the flagstones. (I can’t bring myself to pull them out) According to my mother, if it’s not growing were you want it too, or it’s taking over, it’s a weed pull it out.

Weeds can also be pretty.  We’ve quite purposefully left some cinquefoil growing in a few flower beds.

When it comes to weeding, my mom and I follow my grandpa’s advice.  If you don’t know what it is, let it grow.  If it’s pretty and you like where it is leave it, if it starts to choke out your other flowers and isn’t pretty, dig it up.

I’ll pretend that this is the advice I was following when I didn’t pull the weird things growing in my flower box on the balcony and not laziness.

I really didn’t think I’d have to fight weeds in my grow boxes out on our itty bitty balcony since our apartment is on the third floor and it’s somewhat sheltered from wind and other stuff.  So maybe it was also curiosity that led me to leave the little green things to grow amongst my flowers.  There’s no way I deny it was laziness when I let them keep getting bigger when they were clearly not pretty flowers.

When they were finally about 6 inches tall I got off my ass and pulled them up.  Upon closer inspection, while I knew they weren’t flowers, they also weren’t any of the broad leaf weeds that I’m familiar with.  I’d thought maybe they were dandelions in their early stages but they clearly were not.  Then an idea occurred to me.  I sniffed them.  Smelled like lettuce.  I took a bite.  Tasted like lettuce.  So I took them to Chris.

“Do you think these are lettuce?”

“They do kinda smell like lettuce.”

“Eat them!” I demanded.

He obligingly took a bite.

“Taste like lettuce.”

Apparently some of the vegetables I’d attempt to grow in that same box in the spring had decided to germinate a bit later in the year.  Now I wish I had let them grow more but I made the best of the situation and had a baby romaine lettuce salad for breakfast.  I’ve decided it’s good to know weeds as well as flowers so I don’t pull up hapless baby vegetables in the future.