The Humbling Wisdom of the Weeds

The old adage suggests that weeds are simply plants growing where you don't want them to be.  Now that the garden is fully planted, with growth actively underway, I am discovering the dubious companionship of all sorts of these "plants growing where I don't want them to be."  Indeed, I am finding that the name chosen for our humble effort -- "Taproot Garden" -- is coming back to haunt me, with many of these inconveniently located plants establishing a prior claim via impressive taproots of their own.  The photo illustrates one such root, extracted I must say with a smile, and held upside down for the camera.  Because photography can be deceiving, I should explain that the above-ground portion of this particular specimen measured perhaps a foot in length; this taproot shot down into the ground perhaps half that length -- at least the portion of it I extracted.  A close inspection of the tip reveals a truncation likely to be the foretelling of a growthful return. 

It is humbling work, this tedious business of uprooting.  I, after all, am the interloper exerting an alternative point of view, an alternative rigor, and an alternative outcome desired than simply the fullness of growth and spread as intended by these...er...uh..."weeds."  They were here first, stretching their whiskery toes and gleaming torsos in opposite directions to reciprocal benefit.  And by the looks of the landscape, they have been doing so happily and with wildly successful results.  I am under no delusion of my own effectiveness.  A scant few weeks of inattention and I know full well that the garden space I have so laboriously carved out of the acreage would be utterly reclaimed and reversed.  These are the truer inhabitants of "Taproot Garden"; merely and begrudgingly allowing me temporary use.  Long after I am finished and moved on, they will be thriving in place; the wounds of my tiller and spade long erased and forgotten. 

It's a sobering discernment, but worth holding before me lest I lose myself in the hubris of cultivation.  The flimsy little fence I have stretched around the trenches for protection no doubt does little more in the long run than allow me a season's night sleep; it doesn't ultimately stake much of a claim -- nor do I.

Maybe this sort of cautionary reminder of transience is what scripture intended when it observed that we are dust, and to dust we shall return; grass that flourishes for a time and then withers. 

Who knew the arrogance that could be blunted by a little simple weeding?