Pulling up just one weed…

I have a compulsive behavior. I have learned to control it, mostly. But the other day it got the best of me.

I was at Reinhart Park in Idaho Falls watching my granddaughter play in the splash pad. We took her to the playground area and helped her play there for a few minutes, then followed her around as she explored her world. I love watching young children explore their world. It’s a beautiful little park and gets lots of use. Everyone there seemed to be having a great time.

As she wandered over to the edge of the playground I gasped as I noticed she was walking right over a patch of puncturevine, known by many as goathead. My first thought was to make sure she was wearing shoes. Thankfully, she was. Then my compulsion got the best of me — I started pulling up that patch of puncturevine and couldn’t stop until it was all out of the ground and in the garbage.

This got me thinking, what if everyone who went to a public place pulled just one obvious weed during their visit? I say obvious because certain plants are not weeds to the parks and recreation department. But there are obvious weeds —Kochia, puncturevine, redroot pigweed, prostrate pigweed, prickly lettuce, knotweed, spotted spurge, common mallow, green foxtail, redstem filaree, western salsify, morning glory, musk thistle, etc.

Regardless of how pretty it is, if a plant is growing where there should be no plants, it is a weed.

This time of year, there are a lot of perennial and summer annual weeds that are flowering and developing seeds. If we can get them out of the ground and in the garbage before the seeds drop, we will be making great strides in reducing the weed problems in our area — at least in the public parks. If everyone who goes to a public park, county, or state fair pulled just one weed, even a small seedling. The weeds would eventually lose the war.

Weeds do not recognize property boundaries, so we all have a responsibility in our war on weeds.

Of course, new seeds will come in on the wind or with tumbleweeds, so the job will never be really done. But we should all take part in beautifying our public places — and it would help me with my compulsive behavior…