My mother was a weeder! She looked at crabgrass and every weed as her personal enemy. How dare a weed grow in her yard that was a personal affront! War it was!

She was never a gardener of large perennial flowerbeds or great vegetable gardens. There were a few beds around the house mostly with azaleas and bridal wreath. A few roses were down the hill from the garage. That was it when it came to gardening skills. As we grew up in Florida and the soil was so sandy and it was so hot I think this was all she could handle on the planting side of gardening. But when it came to weeding there was no one who was better.

Our house was one of the first built in our neighborhood. Our house was also the first house on the street coming into the neighborhood. We had a large yard and our house sat on the only hill for miles around. Over the years people would seem to find it fun to do donuts in our yard or to sneak up our drive way and go flying down the hill. Needless to say my parents were not happy with the end results of tire tracks in their grass. They worked hard to get the grass to grow only to have some joy rider tear it up.

Our yard was sandy and large, it was always a challenge to get grass grow. Crabgrass and sand spurs always seem to be our yard's best harvest. My mother couldn't stand the joyful spreading of the crabgrass system. She also knew one of her children me seemed to be a sand spur magnet and was always in pain from each encounter. Her personal war was against these two weed sinners and their lesser other friends.

My mother was known in our neighborhood as "The Weeder." She would be out in the yard for hours upon hours in her shorts and yard gloves digging away at her opponent. You couldn't help but see her when you came in the neighborhood. As we grew older and moved away weeding became one of my mother's main ways to relax. When she remarried after my father died it was her escape from "Mr. Grumpy."

When I would go home to visit and run into people from the neighborhood everyone would tell me how much they enjoyed seeing my mother outside in the yard weeding. People would drive by and blow their horn and she would wave at them. She was always working at it. She had a little cart and she would scoot across from weed to weed. Hours would pass by and she would be so wrapped up in her task.

Once, when she was weeding my stepfather went out for a walk without locking the door or telling my mother. She

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