We dropped by our old neighborhood this weekend. Stopped in for a visit with Rose. Looking out her front door at our old house, we noticed that the new owners had torn out all of the plants in the flower beds and put down mulch. All of them. Including the hydrangea and the butterfly bush and the big clump of phlox that proudly bloomed in a pale purple all summer long. They must not be gardeners.

I can't blame them, really. I know it must be overwhelming for former apartment dwellers to inherit more than a tiny patch of garden. I know how the weeds creep in. I know how it is to want to erase the blatant thumb-print of the former owner and make the place your own. After all, we tore out every single yew that shrouded the front of the house when we moved in.

But then I thought about all the daffodils and tulips hidden in the ground. I wondered if any of them would survive the upheaval and surprise the new owners in the spring anyway. I hope they do.

Rose said she watched as they tore everything out and tilled it up. Every once in a while, she wandered outside and waited for them to look up so she could wave. They never did. I told Rose they would probably plant some little square shrubs, something more manageable. We laughed. Little do they know a quick tilling and some mulch are not the answer. Bee's balm and burmuda root chunks are snickering under the layer of mulch, waiting for the right time show that they won't be so easily defeated.

Then we looked at Rose's garden. A mish-mash of flowers she loves intermingled with the weeds she is having a hard time keeping under control. "Do you see that weed?" she asked, pointing at a five-foot-tall plant topped with a spray of purple flowers. I had reconized it earlier as one of the plants that grow in the pastures around here. "I wish all weeds bloomed," she said. "Then people wouldn't know how weedy my flower beds are."

"That's not a weed," I told her. "That's a wildflower."