I was walking back to my place to pick up the wheelbarrow and some tools and I saw this bloke picking weeds.

“What are those?”, I asked.

“Chickweed”, he said, and asked, “Are you Michael?”

“Sure”, I said.

“I’d like to come gardening with you”.

“Well, email me and I’ll put you on our gardening list and you can come any time.  We garden each Friday”.

Later that night, it must have been after service, I got this email.

Down the bottom after his signature was his title, “x, chef de [world famous restaurant]”

Anyway, next Friday, he turned up and he had a couple of mates, too.  They got stuck into the compost, got dirty and actually did something.

Interesting.

And, anyway, he showed me what I didn’t know, or, really, just a little bit of the huge amount I don’t know.

“We use chickweed in our salads”, he said, as he showed me what I’d regarded as weeds.  They were, really, anything but.  Wood sorrel, the peppery smaller leaves of Nasturtium plants – try one as big as your finger nail and it will blow your nostrils sideways.  Fine, un-noticed, un-acknowledged leaves of oxcalis and other under-stated ‘weeds’.

We all know so little about what’s in front of us.  Weeds are food.   Weeds are nutritious.  And they’re everywhere, so long as they can escape the ignorant, untutored pest sprays of the council weed killers.

But, really, the thing for me in all of this, this meeting on the street where I live, is this:  when we talk to people on the street a whole new world opens up to us.   We see and learn about things no uni, tafe, school, tv program or book can tell us; it’s real, there, and waiting.

Go to, garden in your street,

Michael