Safe

Friend or foe?  I looked at the green leafy, stalky, rooty thing in my hands, plucked out of my flower garden, and made a decision. Goodbye. There were grasses, lanky and luxuriant. Gone. Crabgrass nuzzling the dirt. Outta here. Something with a triangular leaf reminiscent of something I also had questions about last year. Adios.

There were runners lacing together whole stands of other plants. Come out of there, you. The seeds I planted this spring here. Well, you're not them. They're dead, alas, but you can't take their place. Vacate. You vicious vines twining up and around everything and willing to let go of the root so that it survives to sprout again. Sneaky. Take that, and that. And what do you mean crowding out that row of tender plants whose name I've forgotten but which I actually planted this spring and is growing. Them I'll cherish. You, I'll extirpate if I can.

Cosmos are coming up. That's a colorful, bouncy flower.  Butterfly bush is burgeoning with big purple flower clusters. Indigo plant from last year seems to still be in deep thought about actually flowering. Tickseed is going great guns, its yellow flowers numerous and bright. My pincushion flower in butterfly blue is making its small contribution. There are still a few roses. Then there the big stalky flower with tiny pink flowers that look like fishing flies. It's big, healthy, beautiful and, though I planted it, not known by name to me.

I'm not a great gardener, no, no. But flowers have unique beauty and I want all the beauty around me I can get. However, every green thing has its own aspirations. I've grown more ruthless in my oversight of my garden. It doesn't seem so much a moral question (after all, I am bleeding heart liberal) as a constant vigilance for my vision of the place, evolving as it is, but never just a weed patch. I'm after an array of color and form that can rest the eyes of passers-by, and me. I want a place that's not like every other overgrown plot.

Plants are as ruthless with each other as I am with them, and more so. They crowd each other above ground and below, seeking sky advantage, water advantage, seed advantage, sheer volume advantage. I've chosen the plants I want to support and I'm sticking with them, even if I don't always remember what they're called. This is the form of my loyalty. Theirs is to flower every year, or later this year. Call us friends.

Okay, the plot is cleaned out, mostly. If it isn't up yet, it's not coming up. Let's put some store-bought hot pink zinnias here, and some unidentified half-price blue foxglovely flower in there to proclaiming itself. It's not very full or striking, but now this garden has more balanced color, and no, at least fewer, weeds. More flowers are on their way. And who knows what that no-name row will produce.