Your Turn By MERIWETHER GILMORE

My Volunteers
One fall weekend last year, we spent our time getting our house ready for guests. Our youngest daughter, four months old, would be christened and we’d be having about 35 people for dinner after the evening Mass.
Our house is not big, and we were hoping for nice weather so our guests could spill out on the porch and in the backyard. My yard used to have a cultivated look, but it went through a whole Virginia summer without any attention. With two older children and an infant, yard work was the last thing I had time for.
But realizing how truly bad the weeds had become, I took advantage of a cool autumn afternoon to salvage some space before the party.
As I pulled a huge clump of Love-in-a-Puff, I discovered a rosemary bush that I had forgotten about. It had grown a good two feet since I had last spied it.
I was energized—what else would I find?
I grabbed my gloves, put the baby in her bouncy seat where I could see her on the back porch, and began a frenzy of yanked Bermuda grass and flying volunteers. But when I got to the fence and the morning glories, I stopped.
They were incredible—crawling over our fence in a full, lush blanket with brilliant spots of purple, blue, white and pink flowers.
Deep inside, I struggled. For years I had fought those persistent vines. Our backyard was a horse pasture before we built here, and there seemed to be an underground spring of morning glories that climbed up everything: trees, bushes, tomatoes and croquet wickets.
But that summer I had let them have their way and now here, in the fall, they were adding their beautiful color to my otherwise barren garden.
I didn’t pull them down, of course. I welcome them now and wish that I had let them grow in the past. Were they really hurting anything? Or did I just not want them because they were weeds: unplanned and uncultivated?
So even though I have given up my manicured backyard, I have gained much—another sweet baby to snuggle with and the surprising reward of doing less, not more, yard work.

Meriwether Gilmore lives in Ashland with her husband, Dave, and their three daughters: Susannah, Daphne and Meriwether Harper. She writes the weekly "Ashland" column for the Herald-Progress newspaper.