God made weeds too

So earlier today the boys and I were outside enjoying a beautiful summer day, when something made me do a bit of weeding...that something being Luke. I rarely do weeding, and am very lucky that I have a mother-in-law who is a bit anal-retentive about weeds in the garden. I know when the weeds are getting bad, not when I bother to look at my garden, but when my in-laws show up for a visit and my father-in-law shows up without my mother-in-law. It's not that they didn't come together...no, it's that she couldn't walk past the weeds in the front flowerbeds and spends the first part of the visit on her knees pulling out weeds. When she finally makes it to the door she's carrying a handful of weeds for the compost bin. Some people may be bothered by what they might call meddling, I'm thankful for what I call free labour. I usually then suggest that we head out to the back yard for a little while. I hope she doesn't realize that it's not because of the beautiful sunshine, or how much the boys enjoy the sandbox, but rather a ploy to extract as much free labour as I can before the visit is through. In the back yard she doesn't have to clutch her handful of weeds, but rather throws the weeds into a large enamel-coated handled bowl that belonged to my great-grandmother. It's got a few rust spots, but is the perfect weed receptacle. Which brings me back to today, when Luke brought said bowl over and wanted to pulls some weeds so he can make a "caesar salad". A few years back we made a peanut shaped garden around the big evergreens in the centre of our yard. My goal was to fill it so full of perennial plants that there would be no room for the weeds to grow. My mother-in-law graciously split her plants and the plants of her friends to aid me in my quest, and so other than a few hostas that I shelled out for, my garden was furnished with donations...most of which I have no idea what they are. It is a wonderfully cheap way to garden, but it does have a downfall though. There I am trying to show Luke which are weeds so we can pull them for the bowl, but I'm not sure about some of them. For once I was thankful that our dog Rita had taking up the hobby of digging in the garden. There was a barren area at the near end where her most recent excavations have taken place, but I remembered in the springtime she used to dig at the far end. So Luke and I headed over to what was empty this spring before we filled the dirt back in, and low and behold it was filled with big ugly weeds. In no time we had the "salad" bowl overflowing. Today's experience did get me thinking though. What makes a weed a weed? I think of Shakespeare's line in Romeo and Juliet, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet". Is there a place in the world where roses are weeds? Is there some woman out in her backyard somewhere hands covered in thorn pricks saying "I wish I could get rid of these roses...they're everywhere! My poor dandelion plant can't get any sunlight, because the #@%&* roses keep getting in the way!" Look up weeds on Wikipedia (click the logo). Weeds are just regular plants that grow well in whatever gardening zone you're in. We live near Assiniboine Forest where the last few summers students have been hired to "restore the native prairie grassland" which really means weeding so that the original weeds can grow back now doesn't it?
So really, who am I to decide what plants should grow in my garden...God made those "weeds" too. They have just as much, if not more, right to grow in my garden as the ornamental grasses and day lilies do...don't they? Of course I am one of those people who will find any way to justify not doing the things I don't like doing, and weeding is one of them...but still. Which reminds me, I'd better call the in-laws and invite them over. There's still plenty of weeds back there.