Driven Back to Eden by Edward Payson Roe — Read

The beautiful transition period of spring passing into summer would have filled us with delight had we not found a hostile army advancing on us -- annual weeds. When we planted the garden, the soil was brown and clean. The early vegetables came up in well-defined green rows, the weeds appearing with them, too few and scattered to cause anxiety. Now all was changed. Weeds seemed created by magic in a night. The garden was becoming evenly green throughout; and the vegetables, in some cases, could scarcely be distinguished from the ranker growth of crowding, unknown plants among and around them. I also saw that our corn and potato field would soon become, if left alone, as verdant as the meadow beyond. I began to fear that we could not cope with these myriads of foes, little now, but growing while we slept, and stealing a march on us in one part of the place while we destroyed them in another.

With something like dismay I called Mr. Jones's attention to these silent forces, invading, not only the garden and fields, but the raspberries and, indeed, all the ground now devoted to fruit.