Thrice the same weed has bedeviled me. Each encounter drove home an important lesson about gardening, but three times was getting a bit ridiculous.

My lessons started many years ago when my occupation covered well over 100 acres of fruit and produce. In one tiny section of less than two acres a small weed thrived. It grew nowhere else on the farm.

It was just over a foot tall, had a few well-spaced maple-like leaves and a small hibiscus shaped white flower with a purple center and produced a rather large very hard seed. The hard seeds resisted chemical controls and repeated hoeing only seemed to encourage it.

The message it sent was "I am only happy at this one spot and you can't control me." For the decade or so after I quit produce, I let that area grow up in natural grasses, clover and weeds. I simply visited several times a year with the mower. The weed disappeared and I forgot about it.

Five or six years ago I was studying a seed catalog and spotted this wonderful sounding hibiscus. I ordered some seed. You guessed it, my weed was back.

We often joke that every flower is a weed someplace and every weed is a flower some place. I proved the former, but I still hope that no one loves some of the rascals that plague me in my garden.

My weed flower was again forgotten until several days ago.

About mid-summer I disturbed some dirt on the edge of that old produce field to make room to grow some shrubs. My weed is back with a vengeance in its previous haunts. A similar disturbance about fifty yards away yielded not a single weed but, they had never extended that far years ago, either.

Weed seeds can lie in the ground for many years waiting for the right opportunity. Most weeds germinate on the surface or in the top half inch of soil. There in lays part of their control. Every time we disturb the soil surface we invite more weeds to grow.

Now I am not saying don't pull weeds. By preventing them from growing and going to seed you can slowly win the weed battle.

A reasonable coat of mulch will also bury many weed seeds too deep to permit germination. To me and inch or two is reasonable. More than that you are creating an environment for fungus diseases to thrive.

If you use any kind of germination inhibiting chemical it is important to not break the soil surface after application. Any time you move soil after treatment you are bringing untreated soil and more weed seeds to the surface.

My weed is picky about its environment, it's pretty and even though it annoys me, it has given me a better appreciation of the workings of nature.