A non-useful plant. Some weeds have attractive flowers, but they’ll take over your landscape if you allow them.

Consider the wild morning glory vine. Pretty, small white or pink flowers shaped like a phonograph bell speaker. If they get a foothold, it can take several seasons to pull them out while they climb and strangle whatever they entwine themselves around. Other weeds have underground root systems – sneakily popping up far away from the original spot. They can be hard to eliminate – think poison ivy vines. Invasive crabgrass will crowd out a bright green lawn as its non-stop-growing stems root anywhere they touch the ground. The bright colored yellow dandelion soon becomes a lollipop of seeds blowing everywhere.

We each need to take stock of what is a profitable flower growing in the landscape of our thoughts, and which are invasive weeds sown in our minds and hearts to bring us down.

Seeds of all kinds fly through the air, by wind, on birds and animals, what we watch and listen to, who we hang around. We have to decide if it is a weed seed growing in our mind or a flower seed of something useful.

When any seed takes root, it’s small and easy to pull before it causes damage. So let’s tend our mental garden often and keep unwanted weeds from getting started.