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I have often wondered at the hardiness and mutability almost like chameleons of weeds. I am not talking about Queen Anne's Lace or poisonous vines but those bizarre weeds that appear as if by miracle mimicking carrot tops or marigold's and growing right along side of your carefully planted carrots and marigolds. How do they appear out of nowhere and have root systems hardier than food plants and flowers? If someone could tell me that nature has designed in those pesky cultivated plant imitators a gene pattern meant to be indestructible like boll weevils then I would again as I have resorted to now, get out my round-up and spray them out of plant gene pool.

I am in favor of week eliminators. Of course, I am also organic and believe in minimal plant fertilizers. But, my green gardening left me with a yard full of the lowest growing purple clover flowers with a delightful tinge of white, dandelion greens that could be boiled and jarred and used to cure everything from hepatitis to scurvy to dandruf, tall tuffs of wheat imitating weeds that I pluck and walk around with one stalk in my mouth while I prance around the yard letting my envious neighbor know that I don't care about them.

During my green gardening, I forgot about the reason why green gardening which I am assuming means no fertilizers, no pesticides and no garden bug killers, was dropped in favor of pesticides, back breaking labor. Those fairy tales of women in white garden gloves and large, brimmed hats with lovely baskets are just that fairy tales. To weed a patch of garden the size of a volkswagon, you need to spend two hours a day, preferably in the morning and you have to be able to bend over or else become an adept with a hoe.

What I did in my garden at the end of last year's fall roundup was to pull out all the weeds and sad cultivated plants. I then threw down a fine cover of Preen. When Spring broke in with weak spots of warmth and freezing cold, my little patch of garden had few if any weeds. I planted early. While my seeds have sprouted and are struggling to grow, doubles are springing up as if my an evil spell alongside side my new seedlings. I wait awhile and after a rain, I go out and carefully yank the sent from Hell double. I have also sprayed the cracks in my cement walks, and the bricks that line my backyard with RoundUp weed killer.

I am not apologizing for my return to chemicals, I do not think that they are sinking into my rain water drainage pipes and being dumped into our waste treatment plants. And, even if they are, my weed population is vanishing.

Learn more about this author, Nora Nick Katsourakis.
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