Gardening Disasters: Evil Lurking In My Flowerbed

This weeks Sibling Assignment comes from Inland Empire Girl. The topic: Gardening Disasters. Here is her post, and here is Raymond Pert’s post.

I have always had fairly good luck at outside gardening. (Now houseplants are a whole other story. If I would water them, it might help!!) But my outside flowers and vegetables have always done pretty well.

But once evil forces enter your gardening area, disaster can happen it the subtlest of ways. It is as if history is repeating itself…the beginning of history.

In the book of Genesis in the Bible, it tells the story of Eve, the first woman God created, being tempted by the serpent to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. It goes like this:

Genesis 3
The Fall of Man
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

This story began a pattern. At the beginning of Creation, the devil hung out in gardens.

Today is no different.

While living in Meridian, Idaho, I had my own visitation from evil, in the form of this:

Some call it puncture weed. But it is also known as goatshead weed. And I’m sorry, I don’t buy the fact it is called a goatshead weed because of the spiky seeds. They are called goatshead weeds because they are derived from the pit of hell…the goatshead is a popular satanic symbol, and I believe the devil came to earth and spread these seeds to inflict not only damage to our gardens, but also to our feet, shoes and bike tires.

Feel lucky and blessed if you have not encountered this weed. My flowerbed in Meridian was covered with them. They start out innocently enough, but then, before you know it, they take over your flowers, and entwine among everything growing. Then they produce little hard spiky pods that are tracked into the house on the bottom of your shoe, and also puncture bike tires. And, heaven forbid if you walk outside barefoot and step on one of those pods. OUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After this weed overtook my flowerbed, my mom came for a visit and knew something must be done. So she spent days out in the flowerbed in the hot Treasure Valley sun pulling these weeds, pouring salt water on them to kill them, and finally ridding my flower bed of the pesky menace.

They are such a problem worldwide, that they have a whole website devoted to them called www.goatshead.com. You can even buy puncture vine eating weevils now to help destroy this crafty garden interloper.

My little corner of the Silver Valley has not been infested with this evil menace. Here, if I can just get the grass pulled out of my flower beds, I’ll be doing good. But grass is just invasive…not evil.