Today's been a day of labor - mostly re-arranging things (our books written, we're changing round studies in the house again, which is more hellish than it sounds - think books; think papers; think stationery; think all kinds of personal Items), and pulling weeds. These are very thorny, spiny, vicious thistles, so I was extremely thankful for my pair of leather Royal Horticultural Society gloves from Kew. And then, pulling tumbleweed.
And also, reading Richard Mabey's Weeds. I never fail to enjoy Mabey's writing on things British and natural - and this is truly fascinating (and scary - did you know that a tumbleweed seed can germinate in 36 seconds? I'm not sure that I'm glad to learn that. But I was super-grateful (as I start to think about dandelions in a more academic light ... more will follow) for some of his generalizations about weeds; about how they disrupt categories, resist cultural classification, become domesticated into food, or children's playthings, or are regarded as - a perfect phrase - "vegetable guerrillas."
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