Sunday, June 18, 2017

weeds


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."

No comments:

Post a Comment