I've been noticing a weed growing that I kind of like. I've been pulling it but it keeps coming back. It's less like a weed but more like ground cover. I think it's pretty. When I was out pulling weeds yesterday, I looked at it and thought that maybe I should just leave it there. Would the neighbors think I'm crazy for growing weeds as plants? Would I be similar to a crazy lady who keeps "critters" for pets? (Speaking of which, I scared Cosme last night when I saw a gecko go across the bedroom floor. After researching, this variety is actually a house gecko and they eat bugs and mosquitoes so I'm not on a mission to hunt and kill.) So yeah, I probably won't be the lady keeping possums or mice as pets but that weed might just make me the one with the weird yard.
I took a picture of it and googled "weed or ground cover" this morning. What do you know, a picture of it came up in the images. This weed has a name, Purslane.
I really like the waxy look of the leaves and stems. After reading up a little (when I say "little", I mean a few paragraphs on wikipedia), I see that it's also edible. It's added to dishes in other places, mainly Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Mexico. Now, I could say I want to save time and not pull it OR since I'm 98% European (thanks, DNA testing) I can fall back on that and leave it. In Greece they add it to feta, onion, garlic, tomato and olive oil. That could be delicious. It also has more Omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy vegetable. It's also full of vitamins and dietary minerals. Now, considering the fact that I was about to have a Little Debbie for breakfast the other day, none of that vitamins and mineral junk really does much to push my decision one way or the other. I'm thinking of the important things here: it's pretty and it's one less thing to worry about.
Maybe I'll let it get a little out of hand and see how it looks when there's more of it. If the flower bed starts looking like a crazy lady lives here, I'll pull it. Who knows though. I have an extra pot. Maybe I'll put some in it over by my herbs and see how it does. It's not like adding healthy stuff to my food will kill me... unless I'm totally wrong about this being purslane and this is actually a poisonous weed that has instructions somewhere to "absolutely, positively, DO NOT ingest". If that's the case, learn from my mistake and eat the Little Debbies... and don't take advice from wikipedia.*
*I will definitely research this a little more before putting it in my mouth.
Side note: I like how my next level of research is asking friends on Facebook.
