Asteraceae

While weeding a few months ago, it struck me-- a Canadian of Scots descent-- as metaphorically wrong to be uprooting small maple trees and thistles. I now have two thistles that tower over me and too many tiny maple trees to count. Although the thistles' spikes are rather menacing, there's something quite lovely about their purple flowers and fluffy white thistledown. I fear my neighbours may not see my impulse in the same nationalistically sentimental way when my thistles' seeds start to wander lonely as a cloud over their fence.