I am not the consummate gardener. I just enjoy flowers and do my best to tend them well and not kill them. I have decent success. I don’t win them all, but I hold my own.
I am presently disappointed though as my Persian buttercups are seriously waning. I had them in big pots in the front yard and they seemed to be doing only so-so. I thought they would probably do better if I planted them in the garden. That does not seem to be helping, indeed they seem even more despaired. This irritates me to no end as I do not like failure times five right at the start of the growing season. I cannot figure out where I went wrong.
But that is not what is driving this post today. Today, I am curious about the mystery of the ease with which weeds grow and flourish despite concerted efforts to kill them, while plants that you do everything to keep alive seem to be an exercise in fragility. Why are my weeds so much sturdier than my plants? And what can I learn from weeds that can help my plants?
I feel there is a life lesson here somewhere – something about tenacity and perseverance. Does the universe favor weeds? Perhaps it is about the food chain…are they part of the circle of life? There certainly is something, weeds are made of tougher stuff that allows them to persist and endure.
I guess I don’t have too much against weeds, as long as they are not in my garden. I typically do a weeding blitz in the front end of the season and then put down Preen and enjoy a relatively weed free garden the rest of the summer. But something has gone terribly awry this season. There are weeds everywhere and they are not willing to come out with a friendly tug. I have to plant my feet and sturdy myself to emerge victorious, and sometimes I have to dig them out with the spade. I do not enjoy that.
I have so many weeds right now – already – that I am going to have to do my weeding and Preen applications in sections. There is no conceivable way that I can get it all done in one, or even two, days. And this is after I have been consistently pulling weeds here and there for the past week. What the heck? Why don’t they bear the same fragility plants do? Why don’t they stay gone after I pull up a half dozen of their friends? Many years ago, I had a sign in my garden that read, “The Garden of Weedin’” – I think I am going to need to get another sign like that. That is, unless you can help with this mystery – how can I get my plants to have the tenacity of weeds and weeds to wither upon my touch? If you can help me out with this there is a Persian buttercup in it for you. 
Day one thousand four hundred and twenty of the new forty – obla di obla da
Ms. C