"...cursed is the ground becasue of you; in toil shall you eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you..." Genesis 3: 17b-18a. Perhaps if the Garden Of Eden had been glaciated God would have added "rocks" to the thorns and thistles with which he admonishes Adam.
As a boy I remember that Canada Thistles were so rare that we'd stop the tractor to pull them by hand (using pliers to avoid the stickers). We know now that pulling only annoyed them becasue they grew again from the roots left in the soil. Now Canada Thistles are ubiquitous. My brother, the late Richard, after Alfred Hitchcock released the movie Birds, said "a horror movie should be made about thistles." More recently musk thistles have joined the fray. At least rocks don't reproduce even though it may seem that they do. I'm reframing rocks as good exercise in fresh air. 😁
When I was living in North Dakota fifty years ago farmers told of using russian thistle (famous as tumbleweeds) for hay during the drought in the 1930s. Harvested when green they had enough feed value to sustain livestock without other feed available.
Maxine Kumin says it poetically.
Why There Will Always Be Thistle
by Maxine Kumin
Sheep will not eat it
nor horses nor cattle
unless they are starving.
Unchecked, it will sprawl over
pasture and meadow
choking the sweet grass
defeating the clover
until you are driven
to take arms against it
but if unthinking
you grasp it barehanded
you will need tweezers
to pick out the stickers.
Outlawed in most Northern
states of the Union
still it jumps borders.
Its taproot runs deeper
than underground rivers
and once it’s been severed
by breadknife or shovel
—two popular methods
employed by the desperate—
the bits that remain will
spring up like dragons’ teeth
a field full of soldiers
their spines at the ready.
chrome yellow explode from
the thistle in autumn
when goldfinches gorge on
the seeds of its flower.
The ones left uneaten
dry up and pop open
and parachutes carry
their procreant power
to disparate venues
in each hemisphere
which is why there will always
be thistle next year.
How far did the glacier roll this rock to make it round?
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