I have met the enemy, and she is a Wild Morning Glory!
My tomatoes were being strangled by masses of these wild wines.
I think there are so many Bible parables about farming for a reason. Growing food is a lesson in life.
This morning I thought about separating the wheat from the chaff at the harvest. If you start pulling weeds too soon, before you see any fruit, you might pull up the good stuff along with the chaff. When I plant little seeds in the ground, that's a lesson I've learned. Wait until you can tell which is the weed and which is the produce.
But the Morning Glories this morning made me think of a different Life Lesson. I had to get down to the ground and find where those enemies came out of the soil. Yank 'em up by their roots. If you only tear them from your food yielding plants, they will continue to grow and choke them over and over.
And indeed Morning Glories are pretty flowers.
And this is the life lesson here.
How many non-fruit-bearing people or things in this life are beautiful but deadly...and their flowers give them away?
A beauty that will provide nothing for my table.
A Scarlet Runner pretty girl who will give us beans at harvest.
The Morning Glory vine is hard to tell from the Scarlet Runners...until they flower. Then the difference is stark.
Further...they cannot be grown together in the same spot. The Morning Glory is a tough broad who will choke everything within reach. Hmmmm...a pure evil beauty.
Likewise, the cucumber is a vining plant also, but the leaves become bigger and thicker as it grows and spreads out. This morning the Morning Glories had attacked the fence where the cukes had lodged. I have baby pickles hanging on those vines that my sweet son Jeff loves.
As of this minute, there is not one Wild Morning Glory in either of my gardens.
I will remove that deadly beauty even if I have to sacrifice a few desirable fruits, so the greater good can flourish.
Beauty is many times only skin deep but vigorous in its quest to strangle out good.
Watch out for Wild Morning Glories in your life's garden.
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