OGT DAILY Day One Hundred and Sixty Seven WEEDS

Weeds have a logic all of their own.  I have until recently despised them, cringed at their encroachment and battled them with real muscle to the point of joint pain and chronic allergic reactions to poison ivy and yellow jacket venom.   I have been vigilant for years against the vines and the grasses which will naturally fill up our acre of hillside on the Hudson River.   Our yard can feel positively Amazonian.

Milkweed, buddleia, sweet pea and mugwort

Yesterday I began weeding again after many months, but with less vigilance and rage.  More respect for the plants I was pulling out and a greater willingness to let them be.   Walking home from my studio today I collected many dried grasses - as much as you can find at this time of year - determined to weave them into a basket I'm working on.   My friend Daphne will me celebrating her middle years with a Wise Woman Ceremony - a croning - and that will be my gift.

Our back slope is a tangle of day lilies, grasses, bindweed, and small asters.   I look out my kitchen and bathroom window at it each day, but it no longer raises my blood pressure and makes me want to give up whole days cleaning it up.  

Day lilies and asters through the kitchen screen 

The garden across the street on the river is the same, but today I began to see them in a very different light.  Certain weeds seem to gravitate toward each other and form communities where the butterflies and birds like to nest.   According to Sue Smith-Heavenrich of Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners, weeds grown together can enhance each other's growth and repel insects.   With certain crops the density of companion weeds correlated to the lessening of damaging pests.

http://www.mofga.org/Publications/MaineOrganicFarmerGardener/Spring2001/WeedsasCompanionPlants/tabid/2239/Default.aspx

In Australia they often weave with invasive coco palm.
http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s4038835.htm

What if the weeds were planted specifically to be harvested for weaving baskets? Now there's a concept.

Coco Palm 

Phragmites Reeds

Kid's camp project

http://funcraftskids.com/weed-weaving/