Weeds

I hate them. I can keep control of them in my garden but on my allotment it's a full time job, as I'm pulling out or digging over one lot I can almost see more growing. I often I feel like buying a flame thrower to completely obliterate them. 
Out in the countryside though it's completely different, they are a different species and quite often they can look almost pretty and graceful.

When I was a little girl, probably about 8 or 9 myself and friends would play out every day of the summer holidays. Most of the time it was down the rec, in the playing field, or just outside in the street, possible in those days because there were very few cars. Occasionally we ventured further afield into the countryside in search of adventure. Our favourite haunt was somewhere called the turbs, I can't remember why it was called that but I can remember a den we built and the day we got caught scrumping apples from a farmer's field, I was more afraid of my father's anger than the policeman who gave us a good talking to - we never did it again.

Anyway the point of this trip down memory lane is that on those outings into the countryside there were lots of these pink weeds growing everywhere, although at the time I didn't know they were weeds, I thought they were pretty and I would pick arms full of them to take back to my mum.

My dear mum never told me they were weeds, she thanked me and put them in a vase of water and set them on the sideboard, and there they stayed until they died, then I would pick some more for her.