A weed less ordinary?

Every few weeks I like to go over to the Adelaide property to walk around and see what's growing. Monday night after dinner the weather was beautiful, so we took the kids outside to play for a bit before bed. I decided to put on my rubber rain boots and walk over and see what was up while Dave pushed Simone on the tricycle and Tate ran around. The rubber rain boots are essential for a walk on the property — in the spring it was always muddy, but now there is so much growth that I need them to protect my legs from thorns, sticks and bugs.

It's very green over there right now. Most of the dirt is covered with weeds and foliage, so when there are flowers they pop out very clearly. As expected the orange daylilies were blooming all over the property – in the front, the back, along the fences – everywhere. A great surprise were the sunflowers that are growing. I counted five of them randomly scattered about. They are going to be gorgeous when they bloom. I missed the irises in the back – they had already flowered and died. But, the peach tree!! Oh… the peach tree!! It looked green and healthy, and its limbs were filled with fruit! Last year there were four scragily-looking peach trees that bore no fruit, but we took down three of them and only left the one for some privacy and shade. Well, whatever we did made this little tree super happy and it's just fruiting like mad. Problem is the limbs are all really high. But I guess I'll figure out how to get the fruit down later when it's ripe.

What really caught my eye was one plant in the middle of the property with bright pink flowers on top. So bright, you couldn't miss this plant. The second I stepped up to it, I stopped dead in my tracks. Looked long and hard at the leaves and thought, "Nooooo!! It couldn't be?!?!?!?!" "Could it?!?!?!" The leaves looked like this…

Yup. Pot leaves. Marijuana. But flowers? Do pot plants flower? How would I know? The only times I've seen pot up close it was already rolled into a joint, and my only experience with pot plants are from watching endless episodes of Weeds on DVD. I really had no idea what I was looking at. But it was not a total surprise to see a plant that might be marijuana on this property. Mr. D was a known recreational pot smoker. One neighbor upon returning home from work would find Mr. D sitting in their backyard staring at their koi pond and smoking away. Yes, he would just wander into the neighbor's yard and light up… he thought it was no big deal. So, could he have been growing it in his backyard? Hell, yeah!!

I grabbed a leaf and walked to my neighbor's who stopped cold when she saw it and yelled, "No way!?!?!? Of course he was growing it!!! Is that really pot?!?!" I didn't know. So I went home and showed it to Dave. His reaction was the same, but he told me to go inside and google until I had an answer.

Well, in just a few minutes it was clear that I would not be the Nancy Botwin of Barrington. But instead I was growing Cleome the number one plant commonly mistaken for marijuana. My dreams of a crazy and wild summer were squashed by google and a shitty weed that was not weed.

But I've got sunflowers and peaches. Just as fun, right?!?!?!