gardening

Good plants, like clover, come out easily. As a leguminous plant, clover is good for the soil and a good pasture plant, even if it is often considered a weed in rose beds or lawns.

More insidious plants are nigh impossible to completely remove. I'm gardening for a lady at my church who is going blind. Her yard must have been beautiful once, but as she has reduced mobility and vision, she hasn't been able to keep up. We're going to make it blossom again but first i have to get rid of the choking things: an ivy that's ripping apart the fence. A morning glory vine that's taking over three back yards. Creeping grass. And then a nasty fern thing with thorns, red berries, and root suckers all over the place.

I always found plant rate of growth amazing in the tropics. If you cut a stick off a tree and put it in the ground, in rainy season, it will sprout a new plant. People are constantly cutting the grass, cleaning plants out of gutters, and clearing the ground in front of their houses. The trick is, it isn't only good plants that grow at that rate: unwanted vines climb up corn stalks and drag them to the ground. On the other hand, many Cameroonians i met knew the nutritional and medicinal value of plants that, to the uninitiated, look like mere weeds. They weren't cultivated, but they were plucked for use where they did sprout up. Like a spinach-like plant--it had purple flowers and grew in the lawn. I found out you can eat it. Steamed, it was very tasty.