A Matter of Definition

We have a rather stark looking wall (I think the former owners who built it thought of it as "spa-like") which holds back the hill from our terrace. We planted rosemary--the creeping kind--that is now trailing very satisfactorily down the wall, softening it nicely. Above it on the hill, beautiful drystone walls hold the terraced sections of the hill off the paths that wind their way up to the arbor. Lizards live in the wall and scurry away when we pass. Weeds grow out of the wall and we pull them.

It occurs to me that a weed is just a plant growing where you don't want it to grow. This little plant is a case in point. There's nothing intrinsically ugly about it--it's just growing where it wasn't invited to grow.

Perhaps people could fit into an analogous category. Perhaps sometimes we don't get along with somebody because they belong in a different place. I will have to mull this over some more, but perhaps if we could have a little more tolerance for the "weeds" in our life, we could understand that, in a different context, they would be beautiful..