Weeds

Nancy Gift's A Weed by Any Other Name is probably not a book that I would read on my own.  However, I found the text to be somewhat nostalgic and funny at times; I found myself learning about the weeds that I grew up in.  I didn't know much about weeds, except that most people don't like them.

I thought that Gift did a wonderful job with her metaphors.  They were very visual and easy for almost anyone to understand.  They made what might seem like a boring subject come to life and jump off the page.  In her first section, she compares trimming the multiflora rose to some sort of "blood sacrifice."  She moves on to immediately compare the thorns of the bush to "the size of bear claws."  Later, when talking about the perfect turf, Gift  says that "the grass is perhaps an inch in height but thick, more like green chipmunk fur than like my father-in-law's thinning crew cut.  Green chipmunk fur is about how natural the turf is, too."  The idea of green chipmunk fur is ridiculous just as her view of turf.

The most important parts of the book, to me, were when Gift showed her views toward two certain ideas.  She illustrates her disgust for lawn-care chemicals and herbicides.  She feels that society has forced people to conform to the clear and tidy yard, instead of the natural yard.  "We may not want every weed in our yard, or every critter, but we want to keep a yard that weeds and critters can live in, because that means the yard isn't too poisonous for us, either."

I completely agree with this view.  My parents have a small garden on the side of our house where they grow tomatoes.  If we ever hired a lawn service to raid our yard, I would have second thoughts about eating anything grown there.  Again, I laughed when Gift discovered that her parents had "sold out" and "employed the Evil Empire."  I thought it was interesting how she acted after feeling angry and betrayed.  She refused to let her kids play in the yard and refused to plant in her parents gardens until the clover and violets reappeared.  Like most of us, she saw herself reverting to a childlike manner when arguing with her parents.

One scene in the book that stuck out to me was when her neighbor sprays his yard, and Gift is in her yard playing with her “yearling daughter.”  “Having him spray upwind of us was an offense I was not willing to ignore.”  She does two things here:  defends the safety of her child and backs up her anti-herbicide views.

While reading this I became enraged.  I wanted to walk over there with her to confront this simpleton.  I can only imagine myself doing the same thing for my family.

Another point that Gift continues to touch upon is the newly formed barrier between children and nature.  With the profound advances in technology, kids are finding more and more reasons to avoid the outdoors.  Gift says that she believes that she learned something by playing with plants.  Today, most kids don’t have that opportunity.

I can remember, as a child, pulling at foxtails as their seeds popped off or collecting dandelions at recess to “paint” my friends arms and clothes, whether they liked it or not.  I have a fairly bitter memory of thistle, partly because of my parents.  In the fourth grade we had to pick a thistle and use it for an art project.  I forget the exact process of the project, but I know it dealt with carving the weed into a thin piece of metal.  The bitterness comes with the final result.  My artwork is still no where to be found, whereas my younger brother’s hangs proudly on our basement wall.

Gift constantly compares herself to weeds.  “If the definition of weeds applies to people, I felt like a weed there - a person out of place with the locals.”  I can relate because I constantly feel like a weed.  Maybe everyone is comparable to weeds.  As at certain times we may feel out of place or out of our comfort zone, we each have different periods or seasons of growth and prosperity.