Local Food (Gardening without Tuxedos)

Gardening Without Tuxedos

 Here’s how I might could  say I “teach” these days :

I lay a big sheet of black plastic over the strawberry patch

with holes in it so only strawberries are supposed to be

growing forever because that’s what they’re used to.

            Apocalypse Any Time: Lift the Veil.
                Uncover.  Expose. Reveal

Then pretty quick, I rip it off (as it were, in manners of speaking)

and watch weeds grow up galore, how they overtake and squeeze

them straw berries; it’s a riot, so that by the end of semester what

began as cultivating local food-as-usual (designated aims, goals
& measurable outcojmes) blossomed into:

Velvetleaf, Buttonweed,
Hophorn beam, Copperleaf,
VA Copperleaf, Three-seeded

Mercury, Common Yarrow,
Yarrow, Tree-of- Heaven,
Paradise Tree Mimosa,
Silk tree, American Water,
Plantain. Garlic Mustard,

Wild Garlic Alligator weed,
Prostrate Pigweed, Prostrate
Amaranth, Smooth Pigweed,
Palmer Amaranth, Redroot,
Pigweed, Spiny Amaranth,

Spiny Pigweed, Common
Ragweed, Ragweed, Giant
 Ragweed.  Honeyvine or
Climbing Milkweed, Scarlet
Pimpernel, Broomsedge,
Spurred Anoda, Mayweed,
Chamomile, Sweet Vernal
grass, Hemp, Dogbane,
Mouse-ear Cress Common
Burdock,.Bulbous Oatgrass,
Mugwort, Wild Chrysanthemum,

Jointhead, Arthraxon, Swamp,
Milkweed, Common Milkweed,
Butterfly Milkweed, Butterfly

Weed, White Heath, Aster  

to name a few, so to speak.

ok ok it’s not teaching.
Eduction, maybe.
Seduction.