One woman’s weed is another woman’s flower. One man’s pest is another man’s food. So it goes with people, plants, and nature. By “nature,” I mean both nature — the physical world collectively — and nature — the personal qualities, character, and traits of an individual.
Perhaps it isn’t nature, so much as circumstance or situation. If you get hungry enough, I suppose most anything can become food. I mean seriously, who was the first person to look at a crawfish and think, “I bet I could eat that”? I’ll tell you who — a very hungry Acadian who’d fled Nova Scotia and found himself settled in the bayous of the Atchafalaya Basin in Southwest Louisiana. Over time he figured out that if you catch a whole mess of crawfish, boil them in salt, cayenne pepper, garlic, paprika, onion, thyme, oregano, dry mustard, dill weed, and bay leaves, and throw in some corn, carrots, potatoes, and sausage, those little mudbugs ain’t too bad. Mix all of that culture, environment, necessity, and availability, let it simmer for a few hundred years and voila, the Acadian becomes “a cajun” and an entire culinary style is born.
I regularly get to witness this transformation up close through Levi. Whenever he is introduced to something new he has to figure out whether or not it is friend, foe, or food, and the test for a pickle or a person is the same. First he looks at it, then he sniffs it, then he licks it, and somewhere deep in his little dog brain he decides whether or not to bite it or befriend it.
Whether or not something is a weed or a flower, a food or useless, good or bad, annoying or useful, necessity or luxury, has a lot to do with perspective. When you get down to the root of the matter, the difference between a weed and a flower isn’t scientific, but in the eye of the beholder. There’s not a mama in Alabama who, when presented with a handful of dandelions from a four year old, doesn’t immediately put them in a vase. Likewise, there isn’t a mama in Alabama who has gone to the co-op and asked for dandelion seeds to plant in their flowerbed. Weed or flower, it’s all about perspective.
A plant that is growing where it is not wanted is labeled a weed, and yet some of them are actually my favorite flowers. Ragweed wreaks havoc on my allergies but its beautiful covering a field in yellow during the fall. In recent years, people have started buying and planting wisteria vines, but this purple plant is actually an imported invasive species. Marco Polo first brought it to West from China in the 13th century and it made its way to the United States in the 1800’s. Since then it’s spread from sea to shining sea, consuming ecosystems in its path, much like the more recent unwanted import from China. But for me, Spring doesn’t truly begin until I can see those purple flowers cascading like a waterfall from the tops of trees scattered around the countryside.
What is an unwanted weed at one point in life, might become a life saving staple at another. While living in Florida I was introduced to “swamp cabbage.” Swamp cabbage is essentially the heart of a Sabal palm tree shredded like Cole slaw and boiled with any number of a variety of seasonings. I wouldn’t want to eat it for every meal, but it wasn’t bad. Though not a weed, Sabal palms naturally grow everywhere in Florida, and our hungry ancestors learned that in tough times you could make a meal from what would otherwise be just a decorative tree. Reading about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era I learned that people actually figured out how to cook and eat, and even can, tumbleweed (Russian thistle). The point is this, we learn to do what we have to in order to get by when times are not ideal. That’s a good lesson for a society that has mostly known luxury and abundance, the likes of which are an anomaly throughout human history.
Ready access to an abundance and diverse variety of affordable and easily accessible foods, goods, and services is historically abnormal. Most of us have a hard time comprehending this because we are not good students of history, we haven’t lived very long, and we haven’t traveled very far. My time in Central America gave me a whole new perspective on necessity and luxury. Fortunately for us, we still have a few “old timers” around who remember what the world was like not so long ago. How many of you remember a time when you seldom ever went out to eat? Did any of you receive fruit for Christmas? Do you recall beans and taters for every meal, with the only variation being the type of bean and the way you cooked the potatoes? Can you remember a time when the only cookie you ever ate was one that was made at home? For better or worse, it's all a matter of perspective, times changed, and people had the option to go to the store and choose from a few different types of cookies, like chocolate chip, sugar cookies, and Oreos. Now, if you go to the cookie aisle in most any grocery store you can choose from a dozen or more types of Oreo cookies alone! Seriously, do we really need a watermelon Oreo? I vote we create a crawfish Oreo. How did I get from weeds to watermelon Oreos, where was I going with this? If you haven’t figured it out by now, sometimes I can get off in the weeds in my writing and my preaching.
Back to the lecture at hand. Most mornings I sit and drink coffee and look out at what has become a beautiful red field across from our house. Until recently, I believed the flowering red growth was a weed that just naturally sprouts in a field like ragweed, but I discovered recently that it’s actually a cover crop known as Crimson Clover. Man I tell you, this state really takes its football fanaticism seriously. From the houndstooth wearing red bellied woodpecker I see every morning to these crimson covered fields — even nature seems to be shouting Roll Tide! By the way, as a reminder that this remains a state divided, I learned all about the Crimson Clover from an Auburn University agricultural study. There I go wandering in the weeds again. Let me wrap this up before I start a riot.
Whether or not something is a flower or a weed comes down to perspective, and whether or not the current situation is a blessing or a curse is too. None of us want anyone to be sick or die, but even without this virus that happens. We would all prefer things to be ideal, but in the meantime we have to make the best of what is real. The reality is this virus isn’t going anywhere for awhile and none of us can do much of anything to change that. The reality is our economy is going to take a hit and times will get tougher for a great many people and there isn’t a lot we can do to stop that either, but it doesn't mean those of us who suffer less can't help them out. When everyone shares a little, everyone has a lot. The reality is social distancing and shelter at home orders are going to be extended for the foreseeable future and there is nothing we can do about it. These are things that are completely beyond our control, but that doesn’t mean nothing is within our control.
We can control our attitude today. Will we choose to make today a good day or a bad one? We can control how we spend our time today. Will we spend it frustrated, frightened, and angry or will be do something constructive? We can control how we will come out of all of this. Will we grow bitter and hardened or grateful and compassionate? These are things we can control. “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24).
Now, if you will excuse me, I’m choosing to spend the day planting some food and flowers, and the rest of this evening watching the sun set over a crimson field.
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