Welcoming Some Weeds
It's called Velcro Weed, Holly tells me. I put the picture out on Facebook, asking the hive mind, "Do I want this growing in my yard or not? I mean, real grass is not happening . . . Is this an acceptable green substitute?" The consensus was, NO, it is not. I even had a couple people give me the HaHa emoji at the very thought.
"It's a menace," Diana affirmed. She said I need to take it out, "and I recommend you wear gloves if you have them." A fit warning because there's a reason it's called Velcro Weed. Super sticky stuff. "You can make a tea out of it that has a lot of vitamin C," Holly further informed me.
A couple weeks after I moved into this rental, I met the previous tenants who were visiting a neighbor across the street. My lawn had not been watered for two or three months in a miserably hot drought of a summer when I moved in, and everything was dry and quite dead-looking. I asked the guy if it was really dead or if it would green up with some irrigation. "Oh, it'll get green if you water it," he assured me. "Green weeds -- but it'll look like grass from a distance."
He was right. I suspect no more than 25% of my lawn can rightfully be described as grass. It's weeds. Lots of weeds. But green ones.
This irritated me at first. I wasn't accustomed to living in a house surrounded by weeds. I pondered the idea of offering to pay part of the cost of re-sodding the yard. For some reason I couldn't quite explain, I hated the idea of living in a house with a crappy lawn. As if it reflected on me. People would drive by and notice the mess and think, "Well, that woman obviously . . ."
Obviously what? What exactly did I fear people would think of me? I try now to remember what my snobbish self used to think when I drove by crappy lawns in other neighborhoods. That those people were lazy? That they were low-class? That they were stupid and inconsiderate of their neighbors to let the value of their property decline by not taking better care of the yard?
Sometimes I'm ashamed of my judgmental heart.
I am not lazy, low-class, inconsiderate, or stupid. I am a single woman with limited time and resources and with clear priorities for the use of them. I do my duty: I keep my yard from looking too scraggly, and I keep the undesirable species contained to my space -- and I pull the harmful stuff out, the stuff that would physically hurt me when I walk through it or produce seeds the wind might blow around the area. Most winter days, my lawn looks better than my neighbors' lawns with their hibernating grass. These weeds are hardy; they stay pretty darn green when we're not in drought conditions and require little to no care on my part. I can't get over how low my water bills are living here. And like the man said, from a distance, the yard looks pretty orthodox.
This is the stuff that wants to grow here. Why in the world should I spend the time, energy, and money to force a foreign plant to thrive in this ground? Just because everyone else thinks Kentucky bluegrass is a superior form of plant life, why do I have to succumb to that elitism? Why don't I just enjoy the unique yard God put here?
And along those lines . . . why should I spend the time, energy, and money to color and straighten my hair rather than appreciate the gray, wavy tresses that God is growing there?
Why should I make myself try new food when I already know what I like to eat and I'm not tired of it?
Why should I force myself to participate in regular large crowd social events when my heart is made for two or three gathered in his name?
I know I need to be cautious about indulging my desires. I'm sinful by nature, as are you. But not every natural condition is sinful; not every weed needs to be pulled just because someone else thinks it's ugly. Introversion is not a sin. Repetitive meals and gray hair are not sins. And there is nothing shameful about having a trimmed patch of benign green weeds in my yard. Weeds are not a sin.
Except Velcro Weed. That sticky crap has got to go.
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