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Let Us Now Praise Weeds!

By Ken Wright

"The opposite of wild is not civilized but domesticated. "

- Paul Shepard

"that's what weeds do - they find fulfillment in what's available, what's there, what's offered, in things as they are. I like that in an organism of any kind."

A typically lovely Four Corners morning - diamond-clear and as brilliant as a bright idea. So while the air's still cool I decide to mow the lawn. Such as it is, on our case. Typical Four Corners, again: aside from my wife's colorful gardens, our yard is generally dry, spotty, downright dusty in places, with islands of what is recognizable as "lawn" growth dotted with puddles of richer, healthier weed gene pools.

Today the dandelions are doing particularly well, expanding their collective reach into the thirsty grass like a rising sea level. I mow them down, as is my urban duty, shredding their serrated leaves and decapitating their complex little buttery-yellow heads. But I don't feel bad - I know they ain't dead. They're weeds - resilient and adaptable and clever. And I know my intent is not to kill. I look at it as more like . . . caching. I keep my secret crop on the lowdown for some hard time when it'll be needed to flourish, because every part of the impressive dandelion is edible, and can be used for everything from nutritional greens to a coffee substitute to wine.

I've always had some kind of weak spot for weeds. When my wife and I lived in Boulder, I tried to keep our half of our duplex's lawn as feral as possible. It was an interesting experiment, I thought, to see what exactly would happen to a piece of ground left to the sculpting of the region's natural semi-arid climate. The grass, obviously not from around these parts, quickly faltered, paled and perished. But not long after, a succession of new and fascinating vegetative homesteaders arrived, took root and happily, healthily flourished in their newfound outpost of high prairie.

They were weeds, to be sure . . . but that's what weeds do - they find fulfillment in what's available, what's there, what's offered, in things as they are. I like that in an organism of any kind. Not everyone feels that way, though, and one day there was a nasty-looking piece of official paper on our door with the crest of the People's Republic of Boulder on it, demanding that I cease and desist my . . . well, my ceasing and desisting at watering and mowing and pruning of the piece of land that people can see from the public sidewalk.

I found someone who understood my peculiar pro-weed sympathies when we moved to downtown Durango. Our neighbor was a friendly middle-aged bachelor, who, in the fashion of males left unguided, took minimal care of his lawn. Good care - no doubt, and way beyond my own personal proclivities - but being a professional ecologist, he appreciated and endeavored to work his social obligations within the realities of Four Corners climate.

Except on the northeast side of his house, in a cool, shady dead zone between his bathroom wall and our fence. There, in a three-foot-by-six-foot parcel, he and I conspired to offer a small piece of ground to wildness, and see what happened.

What happened was, while we each titrated just enough water on our yards to keep our immigrant grasses alive - bordering on some kind of plant water torture, I'm sure - our feral little parkland freaked out with a stunning diversity of plant life. First the usual: dandelions and bindweed and such - but, later, in the dry hot days of August, spurred with some afternoon thunderstorms, culminating in a tall, dense stand of swaying green grasses between our residences.

It was lovely. And mostly native grasses, my neighbor observed, rattling off the Latin names of each grass with some awe over how quickly and deftly they had returned. Thanks, of course, to the pioneering preparation of that front line of weeds.

But a neighbor like that is a rarity when you live downtown, and everyone has to look at your strange affection evolve alongside the sidewalk. The other day, for example, I was over talking to another neighbor, whose yard is a magnificent botanical spectacle as lush as a Belgian garden. My neighbor was all decked out in leather gloves, big straw hat and gardening khakis, and was diligently pulling up long strands of bindweed that has snaked their sneaky way into the golf-course quality grass.

Watching, I couldn't help but comment, with all sincerity and sensitivity, that I rather liked bindweed. They're really a string of lovely little morning glories, I waxed poetically, trying to impress her with my knowledge of local weed lore . . . just tiny versions of the regal Evening primrose that blesses the hillsides naturally around here . . .

I knew it was true, because I harbored a partial pasture of pink-and-white bindweed blossoms in my backyard. But I never got to telling her about that, because our conversation was over right about then, as my neighbor quietly refocused on her task at hand, purifying the ground of those tenacious weeds.

I just wandered back across the street to the feral diversity of my own yard. To my own habitat. To my own weedy kind.

Ken Wright grows increasingly feral in Durango, Colorado.