Of Trash and Treasures

I guess according to some people’s standards, we have a lot of “weeds” growing in our yard. But we don’t mind that at all. In fact, we think there’s a lot of benefits to weeds (and, sorry folks, but I’m not speaking about the kind people smoke). We’re lucky to live in an older house in the downtown area of our community so we’re free of homeowner’s association restrictive rules. That means we can have clothes lines, open garage doors, vegetable gardens, and good ol’ weeds.

For example, this common Birds Foot Violet grows freely in our neighborhood. We like it because it’s a low-growing plant that keeps the yard green, without the need to mow.

We love it so much, we have two varieties.

This Indian Mock Strawberry provides beautiful buttery-colored blooms in the spring and bright red “berries” in the summer. These are thick in our yard and, again, we’re tickled pink, I mean yellow, about that.

I believe this purple-flowering weed is called henbit. I have loved this one ever since I was a little girl and would pick them by the bunches and deliver them to my mom. I thought I was giving her lovely bouquets. My daughter thought the same when she delivered hand-pick bunches of them to me.

And that’s where I came up with the title of this post. One person’s trash is another one’s treasure.

We treasure these weeds in our yard because they provide a blanket of low-growing greenery which means we don’t have to mow the yard as much. We’re also not spraying harsh chemicals to rid the yard of these native plants. Besides, who wouldn’t want to walk amongst a field of purple blossoms?

We even have a few of these in our yard. Sure, I can use the greens in my salads and they make for pretty photographs, but I’m no fan of the dandelion. Even weed lovers have their limits!