One of the most exciting things about our new home is the level, open rectangles of clean grass in both our front and back yards. Our built-in irrigation system allows us to keep the lawn watered (once the summer rain stopped being an everyday occurrence) and green, even this late into August.
Seemingly overnight, though, an insidious, uninvited guest joined our lawn party - crabgrass. You know the stuff:
In our old house, our tiny lawn sported plenty of weeds, but there the culprit was clover, not crabgrass. The clover never bothered me - it's soft, pretty, feather-y, and holds the promise of good luck. Crabgrass, however, is just plain meeeean. It grows wide and flat, smothering the happy, healthy grass beneath it. Then it goes to seed and makes even meaner versions of itself. Um, like this:
Rob and I spent a couple of hours pulling the stuff by hand yesterday afternoon--in that time, we got about 1/5 of the front yard cleared. Oy. 'Twas discouraging to gather the spindles of a big clump of crabgrass, hold tight, wiggle and pull it out of the ground, toss it into the pile, and....see that there were still about a zillion clumps left ahead of us.
But discouragement aside, I had some time during this project (and will again tonight, and tomorrow and....) to contemplate weeds.
In 2007, while in Cincinnati for a family funeral, I visited The Creation Museum, which is an evangelical Christian museum devoted to proving the concept of "creation science." Within an exhibit about the Garden of Eden was a series of "before sin/after sin" panels that included this:
If you can't read the text, it says of weeds:
"Before Adam's Sin: No Weeds. God created a perfect balance in the beginning, as plants produced exactly the amount of food needed by the animals of the earth."
"After Adam's Sin: Once animals began overproducing to replace the dead and diseased, they would eat too many plants. So God introduced overproduction of plants to replace the plants that would be lost. As a result: 1. Plants struggle against other plants for survival and 2. Plants grow where they are not wanted (weeds)."
Now - a bit of Creation Museum logic is in order. The museum explains that in the Garden of Eden, only animals and human beings were given "life," not plants. Therefore, people and animals were herbivores--and because they weren't killing something that was spiritually "alive," there was no death in the world...until Adam's sin.
I am a trifle confused on this point because I thought that when Adam sinned, animals and human beings became carnivores, which begs the question of why they would have taxed the plant supply so as to necessitate weeds.
Which probably also accounts for the headache that I had when I left the Creation Museum (indulge me another example: if dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark, as a museum diorama depicts, why do they not roam the earth today?).
But if I weed out (har) these dizzying points, I see in the museum exhibit the same question that I was asking myself as I yanked crabgrass in the August sun yesterday: What are weeds?
The question is literal, on one level--anyone who's ever enjoyed dandelion greens knows that one woman's weed is another woman's dinner. Ditto for the happy discoverer of a four-leaf clover. So who's to say what's an invader and what's a welcome, natural addition to the flora?
On another level, though, the question is metaphysical. What do weeds, as disruptors of our gardens, lawns, and patios, say about the human ideal of a tamed, controlled living space? Is it a fool's errand to try to rein in nature by eradicating weeds?
The Creation Museum's answer is that weeds are simply a consequence of human sin--aggressive punishers that are our responsibility to defeat.
My answer is different--weeds are reminders. They're reminders first and foremost that nature is bigger than our desires for order and cleanliness. They're also reminders that it's our job to protect the earth on which we live, eat, and play--I don't think we have to defeat the weeds, I think we have to protect the grass. Finally, weeds are reminders that the only way to get rid of bad stuff is to put your back into it and yank it out of your life with all your strength. This task might take awhile, but it is always emminently worthwhile.
If you're more interested in how to win the battle over crabgrass than why it's there in the first place, here are some organic lawn care tips:
1. Use corn gluten as a pre-emergent weed killer plus fertilizer for your lawn in early spring.
2. Dig out crabgrass after it's died off from the first frost in the fall.
3. Seed your lawn heavily in the fall to fill in the holes left by crabgrass.
For more organic lawn care tips, refer to this helpful Sparks in the Soil guest post from this past spring.
And please share - in your opinion, what are weeds?
