Milkweed

Milkweed

By John W. Vander Velden             

 

For many years I have dealt with an adversary most stubborn…the milkweed.  Those that work the land, those that hope to earn even modest sustenance as they labor between rows and beneath the sun, annoyed by the plants uninvited to our fields.  Called weeds, we continually battle, wishing only plants of our choosing to occupy our land.  And particularly death to that greasy plant with its slimy milk white sap.

However there is another view which needs exposure.  For large green caterpillars feed upon the milkweeds broad leaves.  I am certain the weed finds no pleasure as it is eaten by what it would certainly consider vermin.  Though we farmers have strong opinions about weeds and insects, we can find humor in the fact that a weed that causes us such pain can be eaten away by a worm which devours nothing else…the milkweed caterpillar.  However this creature could not exist if the weed did not.

Perhaps you have forgotten, easily done, but that worm, that milkweed caterpillar, that ugly, gross worm becomes the Monarch Butterfly, a magnificent beauty of brilliant orange and black which flutters about our homes and lawns, bringing joy to all.  Children seek to capture, while adults watch spellbound as with powerful wings it flits about.  Certainly our world would be blander without the royal winged joy.

When I was in first grade we gathered the parakeet shaped milkweed seed pods.  On these we painted.  Eyes, beak and feathers…crudely to be sure, with clumsy untrained ambitious hands.  Yet many times throughout my life I have seen those very pods split open, watching the seeds flying on silken wings carried by autumn’s winds.  Surely many of those flying wonders landed unfortunately upon tilled land, next year’s pain.

Seldom do we take the time to consider things as insignificant as seed carried aloft far and away.  Rarely do we notice the connection…between joy and pain…between nuisance…and beauty.

Though we have for generations done our very best to annihilate the milkweed yet it persists.  Burdened by chemicals and hoe, eaten by a pest of its own, yet, out of persistence and cleverness, the weed endures.  There is much we can learn from the…Milkweed!

 

(369 Words)