The past several days as I've driven along McCollister Boulevard between Sycamore and South Gilbert, I've marveled at the diverse and scenic display of "weeds" adorning the median. So many textures and heights! Several types of clovers, docks, pennycress, grasses, alfalfa, and so many others that I'm not familiar with, filling in the patchy earth with lush life, the taller specimens swaying in the wind while their creeping companions hunkered in low clumps.
Yes, they are largely (perhaps exclusively) nonnatives, destined to be landscaped away with hardy natives or replaced with turfgrass. Certainly some of my fellow citizens may have thought it unsightly. But even as I mourned the loss of my photo op, I could see that the roadsides were still unmowed, and nearer to the Sycamore roundabout the more narrow median also sported its weedy decor. All was not lost. 
A few specimens stood out: a single magnificent Musk Thistle plant next to the sidewalk. The pale purple Alfalfa flowers. The slope covered in sunshiny Birdsfoot Trefoil. The...Casey's pizza box nestled below. For this stretch of road is also a litterbug's haven: any given day you can find a few dented cans of the ubiquitous Busch Light, sometimes near a half-dozen glass beer bottles and assorted other single-use beverage containers. The plants don't seem to mind.
When you look at the scene as a whole, it can definitely look messy. But if you look more closely and recognize some of the individual plants, you begin to see how they fit together in a spontaneous community left largely to its own devices. You see the bees and butterflies, the blackbirds and sparrows.
I know many will rightly lament the proliferation of these botanical invaders...but they saw an opening, seized it, and made themselves a home together.
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