A Weed By Any Other Name

or Happy Accidents

No one likes goats heads.  I don't mean the heads of actual goats.  Most people don't get worked up about those one way or the other (unless they've lived with actual goats, and then they might have some pungent words to say).  No, I'm talking about that scourge of bare feet, that bane of bicycle tires, that painful thorn in the flesh, Tribulus terrestris, aka puncture vine, aka caltrop, aka goats head.  It is a weed.  It is a menace.  It is a trouble and a vexation, come to torment us.
 

Photo credit Steve Hurst @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database

When my parents were newlyweds and had started their first vegetable garden, they found an unknown but charming plant coming up in it, and cherished it like a wildflower.  (It wasn't goats heads.  They knew better than that!)  They made space around it, watered it, mulched it, and let it grow, until my grandpa, who'd grown up a farmer, came to visit and said, "Why on earth are you growing wild lettuce?"
 

Not wild lettuce.

The thing with wisdom passed on from previous generations, is that mostly it's reactive rather than proactive.  If Grandpa had said, "Beware the wild lettuce, my children.  It looks like thus-and-so," my parents would never have grown it.  But you can't anticipate everything, so Grandpa never thought to warn my parents and instead waited until they already had grown wild lettuce, and then said, "Why did you do that?"  I think he assumed that genetic osmosis worked, and that my parents must already know what he knew.  He was mighty entertained when they didn't.

My parents told me how silly they felt to have grown wild lettuce, but they've never told me what it looks like.  So I know not to grow it, if only I knew what it was, which I don't.

All to say, weeds are an adventure around here.  I don't actually have many, thanks to our dry climate (and a lot of mulch).  Even if we have enough moisture in spring to encourage weeds to sprout, the seedlings don't usually make it past early June, when the sun gets to Smiting strength.  With the survivors, I like to tempt fate and see what happens.  (Unless they're goats heads.  I know better than that!)   It's my own way of living dangerously.  What wild lettuce equivalent will I cherish and then be embarrassed about?  Last year's Weed of Note was a common evening primrose (Oenothera biennis).  This year's seems to be...

even more attractive.  It's certainly a member of the mint family, with that square, chiseled stem, like a cowboy's jawline, only longer.  (And greener.)  My guess is scarlet hedgenettle (Stachys coccinea), but I don't know for sure.  I sure did enjoy wondering about it as it grew taller and those tantalizing buds started to form, and I sure enjoy it now, when dusk turns it to embers beside gaura's bright sparks.

 
Nothing teaches you how to set priorities, to see what's important and what isn't, like weeds.  They're not all the same, you know.  Some are goats heads—noxious irritants, with few redeeming features.  They are the kinds of things grandfathers warn children about, and that no one makes the mistake of growing twice (or even once, because they've been warned).   You rip them up as soon as you see them, because otherwise you'll be ripping up a lot—painfully.

Then again, some weeds are wild lettuces—harmless enough, but not worth wasting resources on.  You don't need to rush to pull them, but you sure don't need to bother mulching them, either.  The only price you'll pay for them is a little embarrassment, so why stress about the wild lettuces in your life?  (Unless Grandpa's coming over, of course.)  And some... Well, some are happy accidents, aren't they?  Scarlet hedgenettles that you would never discover if you didn't let a few weeds grow now and then, if you didn't allow a little room for surprise.  As long as the weeds you let grow aren't goats heads.

We all know better than that!

Coming Around Again

or Circles and Lines

I.
Butterflies never really seem to have a plan.  The monarchs and other migratory species must have one, deep down, to be able to make it between points A and B every year.  Generally, though, linear progress and butterflies don't seem to go together.  At first glance it's all flutter and drift with them, even when they're feeding, sometimes even when they've come to rest.  I was surprised the other day, then, to see a cabbage white flying in circles around the garden—purposeful circles, even if they were a little ruffly.  Normally they flutter in over the wall, flutter back out on a puff of wind, flutter in, lay eggs on the arugula, drift for a few seconds, flutter back over the wall.  This one, though, made six or seven strong (if ruffly) laps before alighting somewhere near the rue and disappearing in the foliage.  I still have no idea what that was all about.

II.
Later that day, a hummingbird made the rounds from one desert olive to the others, circling each tree before moving on to the next.  No ruffles or drifting for him, no sirree:  this was all aggressive reconnoitering, as if he were looking for rivals; he came close to assaulting a goldfinch before remembering himself.  (Hummers:  not easy neighbors for the small fry.)  He, too, made several laps, but then kicked into warp drive and winked out.

Cotula 'Tiffindell Gold'

III.
We've probably all sung rounds at some point in our lives:  "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" or "Hey, Ho, Nobody Home."  Singing them is a kind of sport, like kicking a ball around with a group of friends.

Only usually without lives hanging in the balance.

Rounds can be artistically satisfying, too.  I love the sense of growth as one voice "waterfalls" into another, and the liquid seamlessness once all the voices are engaged.  I also love the sense of sharing, as you exchange parts of the melody and hear how the same tune sounds from another voice.  Rounds don't really go anywhere, of course, except back to the beginning over and over, but you can stop whenever you like, and in the meantime the harmonies that result are sweet.

Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium)

IV.
Time in the garden moves in circles and lines.  We look forward to the seasons' turning and the return of old friends among the flora, and enjoy the ritual quality of seasonal chores:  trimming back dead growth at the end of winter, tidying away the faded tulip leaves in spring.  But we also want to see signs of progress:  to see gaps fill in and trees mature, to have our gardens bear fruit and ripen.

Western sand cherry (Prunus besseyi)

V.
I've been thinking about cycles and progress, rounds and growth, as I embark on my third year of blogging this week.  Tomorrow Microcosm will turn two.  The passage of another year astonishes me.  The first felt like a gigantic milestone; this one hardly feels like a marker at all.  Maybe having written about the garden twice through the cycle of seasons, I'm not keeping each one as straight in my mind.  Or maybe, having shared ideas and gardens and comments with readers and with fellow bloggers, it's harder to remember where one voice leaves off and another begins.  All of those actions blend seamlessly together.

Individual posts of Microcosm remind me more of ruffly butterfly circles than they do of obsessive, no-frills, take-no-prisoners (except for maybe an accidental goldfinch) hummingbird flights.  Garden blogging as a whole, though, reminds me of singing rounds—complex ones, like "Sumer is icumen in", with its multiple canons sounding at the same time.  In both forms ideas come around again as the seasons or the phrases turn; they share a sense of exchange, and of unexpected harmony resulting from separate melodies.  They also share a sense of community that is a little apart from "real" life but that still reaches out to it.

'Mesa Verde' iceplant (Delosperma 'Kelaidis' aka 'Mesa Verde')

Garden blogging follows the cycles of the garden, of course.  As with the garden, though, I'm also finding myself hungry for growth.  Not in viewing numbers—I am so happy with you, my community of friends!—but in style, perhaps.  Do any other bloggers feel that way?  (And if so, does it pass?)  I don't have any particular plan in mind; things are all flutter and drift here.  Maybe I'll try a joint venture or two, or some exploration of plant biology or the history of my little plot of earth, or some New Mexico ecology.  Or maybe a fictional account from the perspective of a cabbage moth making ruffly circles around a very small garden.  (What was that all about?)  Something to fill in the gaps, to grow and bear fruit and ripen.  In the meantime, sumer is icumen in.

And what a pleasure it is, as the days stretch out and the garden beckons, to engage my voice with yours.