The unexpected flower

For the last couple of years, I've pulled a weed that kept creeping up in my front yard bed. Why was it a weed? Because (ask any gardener) I hadn't remembered planting it.

It was an unremarkable dark green plant that didn't seem to have any purpose. I ripped it from the soil and into the compost bin it went.

But this spring I wasn't so fanatical about weeding. Rainy weather and some out-of-town trips kept me from my yard. It gave the weed sufficient time away from my prying hands, so that it came to bloom.

I think it is a tiger lily I planted in another part of the yard years ago, which never came back. How it came to be in this particular planting bed is a question best taken up with the squirrels or the birds.

Is it not a particularly spectacular plant--it is low to the ground, as if trying to hide from my annual culling. Yet I applaud its determination to survive and put out its small show of pink blossoms.

Now I wonder if there are weeds in my notebooks and writing scraps that might also bloom if I would allow it. Given safe haven from my rigorous inner critic/weeder, a poem might emerge, or even an essay.

It's hard sometimes to know when to be vicious and when to nurture, whether it is plants or words.