Eating Weeds

The next time I'm in a situation to meditate on a question, I might cross my legs, shut my eyes, inhale deeply, and ask, "What is a weed?" I mean seriously, looking at the bright, fuzzy face of a dandelion, or braiding it into a bracelet at summer camp, or watching insects gather around its sunny head, you gotta ask: when exactly did it get so vilified?

Aaah, if only we were all making such attempts at enlightenment, the world would be in a much better balance. For one, we'd still have all our bees (one third of domesticated bees--and close to all our wild bees--have abandoned their hives, thanks to pesticides and inexcusably loose "science" legalizing their use), bats (they eat mosquitoes, whom we spray with neurotoxins) and birds (they eat seeds coated with herbi-and-pesticides, too). We'd have lawns that looked more like land than astroturf, and we'd have healthier water to drink, too, when all those chemicals sprayed onto your grass were put out of use. Killing weeds--a multi-billion dollar industry--is what makes us hate lawn care. Not weeds, which are really plants just like anything else. Only stubborner. Which really ought to be admired. And thought about, and balanced--not fought--with the same care nature (naturally) uses.

If the definition of a weed is another man's treasure becoming someone else's pest, then there's no better turn of the coin than at the New York City Greenmarket, where our savvy farmers have culled their fields of several "weeds"to make a quick buck. Two years ago, the weed de jour was purslane (purslane1.JPG) a lemony succulent that the New York Times wrote up in a lovely Russian salad recipe, simply tossed with black pepper and olive oil. Last year it was lamb's quarters (lambs-quarters.JPG), a wild spinach with a rough arrowhead shaped leaf and robust "green" flavor. This year, the verdict's still out. Scapes--the flower of the garlic plant, a narrow twist of garlic-flavored greenery that has to be removed from the plant anyway in order to concentrate bulb production--have been sellin' like hotcakes--but that's not really an entire "weed," just a plant part.

When you next rush across your lawn--or public park--or nearby abandoned lot (New Yorkers only!), I ask you to take a second to look at the plants. Chances are, if they aren't sprayed with pesticides, herbicides or rat poison, there's a salad in there for you. I'm not advocating wild food foraging like a nutty hippie, digging through your neighbor's garden at night like poor Rapunzel's husband. I'm just asking why it's necessary to keep the edges so clean and tidy on nature. After all, if Greenmarket farmers are selling "weeds" at $16 a pound while right behind us in Union Square Park, purslane is growing freely (and inedibly, because of the heavily chemically destroyed soil), isn't something wacky going on?