Hail weeds, the wild child and free spirit of plants
Tis the season for weeds right now. Credit: Michael Dobie
Let's hear it for the weeds.
I say that as a veteran of battle. I have spent more hours on my knees than I care to count, filled more yard bags than I could ever remember. But at this point, a weed to me is like a great player on a team you despise: You can't stand them but you have a grudging admiration because they're so good at what they do.
Is there anything as resilient as a weed? Put aside the knee-jerk revulsion and you realize that they are marvels. You don't have to water or feed them, you don't have to give them space or protect them, you don't have to work the soil to optimize their chances, you don't have to buy seeds and plant them. You can try to ward them off, seal all the cracks in your pavement, pull them up by the root when they do appear, but still they come. And come again.
I haven't exactly given up, but I no longer approach the fight with the same gusto. I will weed around our berries and in our raised vegetable beds and around the tomatoes, zucchini and eggplant; those weeds must go because they suck nutrition from the soil that these food plants need. I have less appetite to get rid of the weeds on the lawn. I say this as someone at war with myself, someone whose Long Island instinct to maintain a lush carpet is tempered by my refusal to use poisons on the lawn. And by the realization — or perhaps rationalization — that some weeds are actually beneficial.
Weeds like dandelion are an essential food source for pollinators like bees, especially in early spring. Other weeds provide seeds in the fall for birds, deer, rabbits and moles. Weeds control soil erosion, their roots create pathways for worms, and they add essential nutrients to soil when they die and decay. Many are edible. Many have medicinal uses.
Still, my appreciation is more anthropomorphic, more of an agreement with the naturalist John Burroughs who called weeds the most human of plants.
Weeds are the wild child who observes no boundaries, the free spirit who does what it wants where and when it wants to. They are the chaos, the unpredictability, the dark edges of life. Weeds do not conform, they are persistent against all odds, and they persevere despite a reputation that makes them outcasts. They are, like humans, almost endlessly adaptable; after a nuclear war, the cockroaches will have company. Weeds are survivors no matter what life throws at them. Nowadays more than ever, that's worth some appreciation.
Weeds also are endlessly different in appearance, like humans. Some are quite striking, a welcome reminder that beauty wears many faces.
In their own way, weeds teach us to be tolerant.
It is true that weeds have worked their way into everyday language as a pejorative; getting into the weeds is meant to be a bad thing, you can get lost there. But weeds also have been extolled by the poets. "Long live the weeds and the wildness yet," wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins. The Island's own Walt Whitman praised the dandelion as "innocent, golden, calm as the dawn." Theodore Roethke wrote an entire ode to weeds. A.A. Milne concluded that, "Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them." And famed environmentalist Rachel Carson wrote in "Silent Spring" that certain plants are weeds "only to those who make a business of selling and applying chemicals."
Tis the season for weeds right now. In May, they are at their nonconforming best. I mow the lawn and level them, creating a neat blanket of various shades of green, but the first thing to pierce that flat top are the weeds.
I grimace, but I wish them well.
Columnist Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
