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A few years ago, I installed a small playground near my island home for my grandkids. Some of them have now outgrown the swings and slides, but I still like to keep the area looking nice. For beauty’s sake, I have planted some rhododendra, hydrangea, rose of Sharon and shrubby St. John’s wart in the vicinity. Every few days, I cut the grass around the playground. I water the plants — especially this past summer when we had so little rain. I pick up random rocks. I spray, to keep the insects away.
The weeds, however, torment me. Anyone who has done battle with weeds knows that some of them slyly position themselves between rocks, making it impossible to attack them with a weed whacker. Some crouch flush to the ground, likewise evading eradication from above. Some weeds even disguise themselves to look like flowers or other acceptable organisms, entitled to share living space with the community. These weeds have tactics.
On a recent morning, one particular weed defeated me for almost an hour. I am not talking about a generic weed here, or a group of weeds of the same genus (or phylum or species or whatever; my high school biology was not my strong suit). I am talking about a particular, individual weed. It lay close to the ground, flaunting several petals, soft green and velvety, all flush with the ground.
I did a little research and found out that this weed is called a woolly mullein. Like a criminal constantly changing her identity to evade capture, this plant also goes by the name of flannel plant, great mullein, Adam’s flannel, blanket leaf, bullock’s lungwort, candlewick, duffle, feltwort, hag taper, hare’s beard, king’s taper, lamb’s wool, velvet leaf and a dozen other aliases.
The weed whacker was useless. And, at any rate, I wanted to pull this thing up by its roots, so that I would never have to stare at it again. I was able to rip off the petals, but the root would not yield to my grip. “Aha,” I said, almost out loud. “I am a homo sapiens, and in several hundred thousand years of evolution, I have developed tools.” I got out my trowel and began digging at the root. It resisted. I went back to my toolshed, got out my pruner, and returned to the scene, which I had now marked with a red handkerchief. This was beginning to be an event.
It turned out that the diameter of this particular woolly mullein’s root was larger than the maximum spread of the blades of the pruner. I sat on the ground for a while and mulled over the situation. Now, part of my brain said that this was a damn fool thing I was doing. I was letting a mere weed take up half of my morning. But the thing had become a burr under my saddle. We all know when that happens. You know that something is a damn fool thing to do, but you do it anyway. This weed was a burr under my saddle.
It was time for the nuclear option. I went back to the toolshed and got out my long-handled hedge shears. They are rated with the capacity to exert a force of a hundred pounds. Permitting myself a slight, grim smile, I went back to the weed’s stubborn root, now fully exposed to the open air like a zebra that, cornered by a lion and knowing it is futile to fight, offers its neck to the more powerful animal. With one snap, I severed the root. I tossed the dismembered plant and its root into the woods.
Now comes the part of the story I find hard to explain. For a few hours, I basked in my victory. I got a can of cold sparkling water from the fridge and sat down on the swing near my dock. But … victory over what? I had defeated one plant. I, a grown man with a house and a car and a lot of education, had defeated one plant. Was that something to celebrate? And why had I let myself become so emotionally involved with this particular weed? Perhaps it, and not me, had been the real victor. I must confess that, reflecting on these thoughts, I developed a bit of admiration for this weed. It had held out for close to an hour, like the Battle of Thermopylae, in which a few hundred Spartans kept at bay a hundred thousand Persians for three days until they were all killed by the superior force.
And another thing. At my advanced age, of late I have been thinking a lot about my mortality. Wasn’t this weed entitled to live, like all the other plants in nature? Did I have the right to kill it? The weed is part of nature, is it not? I admit that I kill certain animals, or at least buy parts of dead animals at the supermarket, but that is for food. Killing the weed was for my aesthetic pleasure. Nature understands that some animals must kill other animals for food. But for aesthetic pleasure? Do we humans really understand what is right and what is wrong when it comes to nature?
Does nature have its own morality, its own aesthetics? I think not. I think that nature just is. But I’m not sure.
And why did I want to kill this weed in the first place? Perhaps some other animals, and even certain other people, wouldn’t consider it a weed at all. Some people might consider this woolly mullein a beautiful thing. Had I imposed my own aesthetic preferences on these few square feet of the natural world? Do we really “own” the part of the natural world in our vicinity, entitling us to have our way with it?
After all of these confusing thoughts, I did not feel so high and mighty as I had immediately after uprooting that weed. I went back into my house, humbled but perhaps just a smidgeon wiser.
