October 24, 1917 The Pueblo Colorado Chieftan (author uncredited) Dressed in a complete boy's suit from top to toe, a rather pretty 17-year-old north side girl was arrested yesterday by Deputy Sheriff Roddy, and soon thereafter was taken to the county farm where she will be held until the county court can take proper action concerning her case, which it is expected will result in a sentence to the State Reform School for girls at Morrison. This is the same girl who six weeks ago, after being missed from home for a week, was found doing man's work for the Fitts Manufacturing company. At that time she had secured a horse and buggy and driven eight miles in the country to the home of a family she knew; there she appropriated a serge suit belonging to the young man of the family, and after bobbing off her luxuriant head of hair, came to town and secured and up-to-date boys' haircut. She then hunted a job and got it. Upon being discovered, she was returned home. Last Friday, after having been given $85 dollars by her mother to pay bills (which she did not pay) and after "borrowing"$20 more from the home, making a total of $105, she donned the suit she first wore and went down town and bought a complete set of boy's attire, including toilet articles, candy, gum, pocket knife with "loud" pictures on the handle, and watch and fob, secured a room on Union avenue, and was probably hunting a remunerative job. Roddy hove across her path and took her into custody. This girl belongs to a good family, has a good and prosperous home, but she just wants to be a boy. .

 

 Desert Primrose - oenothera primiveris

 

My father taught Sunday school for my entire childhood. Between him and my mother, I probably had them as Sunday morning teachers for half of those 18 years. But my father’s best lessons were always taught in the garden.

My father always said that a weed was usually a flower that did not know its place.                       

 He pulled some, he left some, he almost never used poison.

While weeding with me, he taught me the names of the plants, even the ones we were pulling. 

“This is called Deadly Nightshade – nuff said”

I played with that plant all the time – its little red berries made a nice dye.

“Jeepers, will it kill me?”

“Not unless you eat it – You are too smart to eat something called Deadly Nightshade – right?”

“Righty-O”

He almost always veered into the spiritual.

“Weeds are a lot like sin. You have to pull them out. Try to get the roots, or you are just pruning, and they will bounce back stronger. But make no mistake, you will never get them all. Weeding is a forever job. So is uprooting sin. You only get to weed your own garden. Don’t get all proud because someone else has more weeds than you.  You also do not have to let anyone else tell you what to weed out of your own garden. That’s your job.  And remember some plants that people call weeds are actually wildflowers. Nothing wrong with wildflowers, honey – they are a gift from God the shows that He loves us.”

I was smart enough not to eat poison berries. I was also smart enough to know that he was talking about other Christians, and preachers, and the doctrine of entire sanctification.

My father planted a lot of seeds. Some of them were seeds of revolution.