Der Grosse Rasenstuck

All-night rain has filled the water butts again, soaked the earth and has made weeding quite pleasant. I thinned the carrots and did a final thinning of beets (lunch).
Meanwhile I have just finished reading Richard Mabey's terrific book 'Weeds', the story of outlaw plants - considered culturally, historically and botanically. It looks like there may indeed be fundamental gene complexes shared by many 'weed' species which predisposes them to fast growth and adaptability. So, John Ruskin wasn't far from the mark when he said
" A weed is a vegetable which has the innate disposition to get into the wrong place ... It is not its being venomous, or ugly, but its being impertinent - thrusting itself where it has no business, and hinders other people's business - that makes a weed of it."

"What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet."

Gerard Manley Hopkins