Growing Wild

I need a good recipe for weeds.  They are growing better than the vegetables in my garden. Using weeds for food would be sustainable and easier than digging them all up repeatedly. In truth, I do have a terrific recipe for one weed, dill; it’s cucumber soup with dill weed.  But if I let the dill grow everywhere it chooses there won’t be any room for the cucumbers. And dill is far from the only offender.  There’s a small succulent weed that has returned to may garden every year in spite of my never allowing it to flower or go to seed.

                Other unwelcome things are growing rapidly. I have frightening thoughts that if I neglected my garden one year, we’d need a bush whacker to enter the backyard. Suddenly there’s a hedge plant growing up—ten feet high—through the middle of a rosa multiflora bush. That bush itself has branched out in every direction. I spent 45 minutes trimming back only half of it and have numerous scratches to prove it.  

                The flowering quince, which had behaved itself for 20 years, tripled in size this spring.  That’s another recipe I need—some way to use quince.  My neighbor tried to make jam with them a few years ago and reported that she had to use so much sugar that it wasn’t worth it. That plant is the first to blossom each spring. Its short-lived beauty is worth it.