Something a little random for you today. I have quite a bit of garden area around my house, but I am exceedingly lazy. That means that if I get around to weeding, it's typically with RoundUp. My mom knows how lazy I am (and also that I was a bit more ambitious about the yard that I could really handle) so sometimes when she comes to visit she helps me in the yard. Sometimes she and dad come to visit specifically to help in the yard which is really, really helpful. I have a hard time keeping up with it on my own, but I am getting better.
The other thing that needs mentioning is that I really like flowers. I like flowers so much that it doesn't generally matter to me what manner of plant they're attached to. You got it, this means weeds. There are a lot of weeds that I think are really pretty and therefore have been reluctant to kill. Wild violets are a big one. I love their little purple flowers. They're also the plant that taught me that sometimes a weed is a weed and needs to be ruthlessly murdered. Those little purple flowers and tiny heart shaped leaves are great and all, but after a season or two those leaves get freaking huge. Like started competing with my hostas huge. Wild violets aren't quite so cute when they're the size of a small bush. My mother, being a lot more practical, has been trying to keep me from harboring weeds for years. It's even mostly been working. But, before I got better about killing pretty flower weeds she would frequently take matters into her own hands on a yard work visit and take the precaution of removing them for me.
Generally this wasn't a problem. I would be upset, but since the plants were weeds it wasn't unreasonable for them to get yanked. I just missed the flowers. There was, however, one area that my mom did some wicked weeding on that had actual real plants that only looked like they were weeds. I convinced her to stop digging them out until I could get a pic of a flower for her to prove that it was, in fact, a real plant but by that time she had already dug out quite a bit of them. It took them a while to recover enough to flower, but when they did I was able to convince my mom that they were primroses and not my usual run of pretty weeds. Of course by that time I was really sad that they were practically all gone. My mom is an extremely efficient weeder; once she sets herself on removing something it doesn't stand a chance.
That was about 2 or 3 years ago. Since then, mom has weeded that area out several more times, leaving the primroses behind to grow. This year, her efforts paid off. Unfortunately, she never seems to get to see them in bloom which is part of why she thought they were weeds to begin with. I've been enjoying them for a week or two now and it finally occurred to me to take a pic of them so I could share how they look now. Then I decided to go one better and post about it because they are pretty flowers and people like flowers. So thanks, mom. We both know there is no way I could ever have gotten my yard to look this nice without your help.
I love mexican evening primroses (which is the same thing as your picture) and have been growing them for years. Many of the flowers in my garden for 30 years or so are the ones that seed themselves where ever they want. If flowers crowd out the real weeds, who cares where they come up!
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