Violets

Violets, the weed not the dainty purple flower that populates our minds eye, have become significance this pandemic season. The neighbors to the south, during a particularly difficult moment, let their backyard turn into a field of violets. Years later the entire lawn was shaved off and replaced with sod.

Sod is a miraculous thing: like the aunt that disappears for a few months and comes back renewed with years taken off. In one moment, everyone else is forced to reassess their image in the mirror and wonder if they can do better.

And so, it was with our lawn. It went from lush green to a lumpy weed ridden mess. Of course, not prone to quick decisions it remained status quo. Then one day the violets, now expunged from the southern lawn, began to migrate north across the two foot sidewalk and under the cyclone fence into our back forty.

A violet is cleverly designed. They present with a few quarter to half dollar sized leaves supported by flimsy whitish stalks. The stalk originates at the interface between the earth and the sky, and once in the grass intertwines with the grass’s rhizomes. Their soft snarly tuber is buried deep in the soil. And on that pencil-sized carrot like appendage, subterranean tendrils are sent off to inform others of the species that here lives an unsuspecting humanoid open to colonization.

If the strategy is to pull off the leaves, this is wholly ineffectual. Like pruning a tree by cutting off the ends of the limbs, this promotes spindly growth that worsens the problem trying to be hastily solved with one stroke of the clippers.

Thus, when on weed patrol I carry several devices that resemble recently discovered Neanderthal tools. The best outcome is to remove, in one motion, the inches deep tuber without creating a large divot in the lawn. This is seldom the case. Once done the lawn looks like the tee off section of a major golf tournament, pot marked.

If violets would only confined themselves to the lawn it might be possible to eradicate them using physical and chemical means. They sprout from beneath any fixed object that has been haphazardly thrown into the garden. Every brick, cobble, decorative rock, metal sculpture, wooden plank, or fence provides a sanctuary for the tuber. I have dismantled entire portions of the gardenscape to get at an offending root.

In the past, I could not ignore the dandelion’s pretentious display; they were quickly dispatched. But readying for the summer cruise distracted me from what I thought were insignificant purple flowers. Now sequestered, I see the folly of shirking my due diligence. If my mother, an Olympian weed culler, were alive, she would be proud of my efforts despite the fact that it took a pandemic to motivate me.

May 2020