Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s)
So I was gardening again today… to tell the truth, it’s slightly addicting. It’s kinda predictable, and mindless, and just different from what I do… so I slip out to check out the garden and end up being out there doing various garden for a half hour or more!
Well today I noticed that weeds are not only abundant… they are tricky. They actually seem to match the plants that are around them. In stature, in leaf type… it’s crazy! To the point where it is so hard to tell where the weed ends and the good plant begins and vice versa. Next to the cucumber vines was a weed sprawled throughout them that was a vine and looked like a cucumber plant, until I took a closer look. Interspersed between tomato plants was a tall thin leafy plant… JUST LIKE A TOMATO PLANT.
OK, so… I thought that was pretty weird.
It’s just like sin. It looks just like the real thing… a lot! But it’s a WEED, bent on sucking the life out of the good plant and robbing it of all the nutrients in it’s soil, of the sunlight it needs, of the water it needs…
And it’s worthless. The good plant produces (or is) fruit… food…. the weed is just ugly. (Though sometimes deceptively beautiful on the outside… it’s worthless ultimately)
So be careful of the weeds in your life. Take time to examine the stuff around you and make sure it’s the plants you want… not the weed look-alikes….
I was talking with Ian the other day when he was visiting our garden and he said weeds were bad and hurt the plants. I agreed with him andsaid that’s why we pull them out. He then asked me “Grandpa what are weeds good for?” Well that gave me the opportunity to go into one of those detailed explanations my kids just used to love when they asked Dad a probing or technical question!
The conversation was not too terribly long but the essence was this…..Ian you know God created everything and in all things there is good. Weeds for example when left alone, and not mixed in with the plants we want to grow, will turn green and when the sun hits them they will actually produce oxygen that helps keep the air clean so we can brathe. The weeds also provide protection for little insects and their roots help the soil stay in place and just make it better. But it’s still OK to pull the weeds from the plants so the plants will grow stronger and believe me there is plenty of space for the weeds to grow outside of the garden.
I thought you might like to know…….next time I’ll go further to explain photosynthesis and have that as one of his spelling bee words! Love, PaPa Tom
[…] lessons one can glean from a garden. The one that has most often come to mind is what I wrote in this post from 2004. It’s really, really weird to me how the weeds mimic the good plants that they grow […]