Being retired and in between consulting contracts gives me more time to do chores and to think – maybe too much. Anyway, Sunday I noticed the Church parking lot is bordered with weeds. The Sermon was about “you do it” and I translated that to myself, “You pull them” (we can’t afford a grounds keeper). So today I was there and trying to figure out which were weeds (the tall ugly ones in the eye of the beholder), and trying to not pull flowers. The weeds had small thorns on the stems so since I forgot my gloves, they were easy to find. But I was thinking. Are not weeds God’s creation too? Does “thou shalt not kill?” apply here. It reminded me of when we were driving across west Texas and stayed at a motel owned by Hindu Indians. We mentioned cockroaches crawling around the door. They said, Oh yes, they try to get in at night to get out of the cold. We will put a towel in front of your door crack after you go in. Of course they were not allowed by their religion to kill them. Not killing is a good thing I agree and I was wondering if weeds were not the cockroaches of the plant kingdom. What are weeds anyway? Superbly adapted hardy species, requiring no care at all to raise and found automatically in every piece of ground. I wish I could just buy flowers that were as hardy as flowering weeds. I guess if you are a struggling settler (of the pioneer days) and need food, you must kill all competing species in your garden that are not edible in order to survive. But why pull weeds around the parking lot? Because if people see a parking lot gone to weeds, they may think the people inside are not the kind they would like to meet and then they would miss a great sermon and maybe a chance they never had before for a new completely new and better life. So I pulled them all. After all if I carry this “no killing” logically to cows, pigs, and chickens, and then on to ALL plants, I am in real trouble for finding food. So my motto for today is: “Love, my fellow man but not the weeds” - also goes for mosquitoes – and cockroaches.