If You Love Them, They Are Wildflowers

"If you don't like them," she said, "they're called weeds."

"But if you love them, they're wildflowers."

My daughter is right of course. It is why I have so much trouble starting the mower this morning. Miniature violets, like a crowd of lovely children, look up at me as if to say, "Please?"

My mower is roaring and can't hear them. But my heart says, "Go around." And I do.




Tall grass catches the light just so. My daughter says that cut-grass doesn't have real shape any more. It is why I feel compelled to capture a memory on camera, before I please my neighbors and cut it all down.




Here are the purple weeds. But no, I mow around them and change them into wildflowers.




Here are the onions I pull by hand. They bleed onto my fingers. I smell them, along with the bled grass, the bled Bee Balm (which has rewarded my trespass with an Earl Grey fragrance).



And here at last is the garden without (most of) her wild friends. She's beautiful in her way.


Flowers and Wildflowers photos, by L.L. Barkat.