Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

My Planted Weed

Inside our covered porch, the ground is cement, except for a tiny patch of soil the size of a small closet. In that patch, there was, still is, a nice tropical plant and a rose bush, but lots of weeds and ferns had grown in it, as well.

My very thoughtful son took out all the top layer of soil, stones, weeds, and what have you, covered that place with black plastic, and piled sand, pebbles, and tiles on top of it. He left the rosebush and the tropical plant in the middle. I put several pots of plants on the tiles, and that space looks great now. This morning, I was watering those plants in pots when I saw this tiny little weed, a three-leaf clover, peeking from the corner of the cement, just at the edge.

Annoyed, I picked it out. The nerve of that weed in my nice space, right? But it was such a dainty, little thing, and it came out with its roots and all. I didn’t, couldn’t, throw it in the thrash, so I potted it.

I’m now looking at it and thinking what right we have to say what is a weed and what is a flower. “It's a living thing, a weed, really, and it does contain spirit of a sort. It's really an ancient vibration,” said Steve Lacy, the sax player.

After all, as far as ancients go, aren’t I one, myself?

Then I thought of us, writers. The way we delete our works, the way we crumble paper or send the files to the recycle bin…Shouldn’t we give a chance to our weeds and try to cultivate them? Sometimes, we give up just too easily.