Crops and Weeds

In General Biology I learned that the term pest and weed were generic terms—not scientific ones. Humans use those terms to connote any living thing that interferes with expectation. No one living in the United States would consider an elephant a pest, but if you were a poor farmer in Africa and the elephants decimated your farmland, you would. Likewise the mold one eats in blue cheese is a tasty delight but not when the blue mold is growing on your Wonder bread--then it is cause for disposal. Dandelions are only a weed to lawn care specialists but not to the farmer who grows them specifically to put in salads. To farmers, they are a cash crop.

I find gardening to be a chore. I do not enjoy it although I most definitely appreciate a well-manicured landscape. My vegetable garden—loosely described-- is a tiny patch of land hidden from view behind my arborvitae screen next to my driveway, near my gas grill.

I plant a few grape tomatoes, basil, oregano, rosemary and parsley in this sunny sliver of earth. All its inhabitants die over the winter and so I replant a new crop every spring.

Except this year. The abnormally warm winter has caused a shift. Not everything got killed off.

My little garden patch is completely overpopulated with parsley. There is parsley everywhere. And it even reseeded itself in the cracks of my brickwork and on the other side of the aborvite where the herb invader  lethally choked my flowering perrenials.

I now must yank the unwanted fronds. I must replant perennials. There is way too much parsley to be considered a crop.  An innocuous botanical species has crossed over to the dark side--my parsley  has officially become a weed.