Weed inspection

I was weeding the larger rose bed today, quietly minding my own business, when a representative of the Garden Weed Scratchers Society demanded to know what was in my bucket and was it edible? If so, why was I taking work from them?


When I asked why they didn't scratch up the weeds in the garden beds, only the flowering plants, herbs and vegetable seedlings, they all pretended to be very, very interested in a gravel-dwelling microbe for the moment.

Then they pointedly looked at the state of the yard with it's covering of weeds that I hadn't got on top of anyway and wondered out loud to each other what on earth I would do without my little flock of portable scarifiers regardless of what they scratched up. Without them the place would be a jungle...

... and what was in that bucket anyway?