Something to Offer

Poke salat

Last year, I let some poke salat grow in my garden. The plant was enormous with lovely purple berries. At the end of the season, I cut it down, hauled it off, and decided it was a noble experiment, but I didn’t want to repeat it. The poke salat had other ideas, however, and came back. I cut it down. It came back. Right now, we’re in a trimming and growing battle. I trim; it grows.

I didn’t understand, when I let it into my garden, that it was a perennial. I thought it was just an annual weed. Nope. It puts down an impressive root, truly. It’s big and deep. My mistake. I also have a new one growing along the front fence. It’s outside the yard and it can stay there. But I’d like to get rid of the one in the main garden. Of course, that’s the perennial gardener’s battle. Plants are invited into the garden, sometimes mistakenly, and you just have to deal with it. I have the same issue with bindweed that I have with poke salat. I thought it looked pretty, but I had no idea it was willing to climb on everyone. It’s still there, however, and I’m still digging.

In a way, gardening is a lot like life. Everyone has a group of friends and neighbors they invite into their lives. And sometimes they find that invitation might have been extended by mistake. Like the bindweed, they may just be too aggressive and hog all the space. Or, like the poke salat, they may be attractive, but not what the doctor ordered. Or, like the purple cone flower, I love it, but just can’t get it to grow. In the end, human or plant, though, we find a way to adjust and maybe even laugh about it. Because good, bad, or indifferent all the plants and people in our lives, have something to offer, and it’s up to us to find the beauty or failing that, a way to live with them.