AGES & STAGES
by Mocco Wollert
FROM my office window, I look on to a sea of bright yellow flowers. They lift my heart and make me feel happy. My happiness becomes clouded when the gardener in my retirement village says, “Ah those, they are just weeds, and a real nuisance.” Not being a gardener or very knowledgeable about plants, I was
intrigued enough to look up the name for those amazing yellow blooms – Coreopsis. What a wonderful scientific name for magnificent yellow flowers but what would make them a weed? I had to find out more. The dictionary describes a weed as “an unwelcome, wild-type, not- cultivated plant that deprives other plants of space and food.” What if the good plants deprive the weeds of space and food? Are weeds an abomination put on earth by the creator? The word “weed” comes from the old English, meaning garment. Hence, the widows’ weeds were black garments worn after a death in the Victorian era. So where is the connection between garment and pesky plant? I think that a weed is in the eye of a beholder. Maybe we should make a different distinction and nominate plants differently: call them “good plants” or “nuisance plants” or “dangerous plants” like the spiky cactus that takes over vast areas remorselessly like a conquering army. Just as racists are those who deride people from different backgrounds, maybe we need plantists for those who denigrate certain plants as weeds. Have you ever sung to a plant, played music for a flower bush? I am
convinced, and I am not the only one, that they have feelings. Calling them weeds to their faces must make them very unhappy. Maybe it is not dew we find on their surface in the early morning but plant-tears. By now, probably all the gardeners are up in arms. Don’t worry, the man with the big beard on the ABC will explain it all and put your minds at rest. He will probably also have the answer to my questions: If a tomato plant should suddenly grow in the middle of my finely manicured lawn and produce glorious red fruit, would it still be called a weed? After all it takes up space and deprives my grass of food. What about the delicate little white mushrooms that appear in the lawn from time to time, are they weeds too? If so, I love weeds! I have the suspicion that at times, I might be a bit of a weed in the garden of society, staying too long until I am nuisance, taking over when I should probably be quiet and demure. Hopefully, sometimes I can be like the weed Coreopsis and give people pleasure and happiness. Maybe the weeds in the garden of your life have brought you, and still give you, joy and comfort. May you nourish your flowers and love your weeds.
by Cheryl Lockwood
THE first time I cut my husband’s hair was early on in our marriage. I insisted that I could not do haircuts. He insisted that he only needed a trim and I could certainly do it. Close to tears, I suggested a barber. He handed me the clippers. My Mum always said, as she snipped my brother’s curly locks, that wavy hair was more forgiving of hand to scissor error. The hair would bounce back and the natural swirl would hide imperfections. My sister and I, with our dead-straight hair, were not so lucky. Photos show zigzag fringes, victims of Mum’s method of cutting along a line of sticky tape. I don’t think she allowed for the width
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16.indd 2
Brisbane
1/09/2021 11:47:09 AM
