It was Uncle Paul who first got the idea to take the weeds that he was pulling up and plant them in other places. And it was Uncle Paul who ended up creating the first of the store’s famous wild herb gardens.

Sandy’s family had an old story about an old guy they called Uncle Paul. Sandy wasn’t sure whether the guy was really an uncle like a mother’s brother or if they just called the guy Uncle Paul. Evidently Sandy’s Grampy had taken Uncle Paul in when Paul needed a place to stay.

Paul heard voices. Lots of voices. They were all in his head, of course, but Uncle Paul’s own family was really religious or something and they thought Uncle Paul was a devil, so they kicked him out. Sandy’s Grampy took him in and gave him a room. Grampy said Paul was kind and mellow and not a problem.

The story goes that Uncle Paul asked what he could do could be helpful around the house since he was using a room and eating food. In those days, the family had a large vegetable garden where they worked to grow fresh vegetables. Back in the days when Grampy was young and long before Uncle Paul, the family had set up a fresh vegetable stand and sold vegetables to the neighbors. Over the years that had grown into a little farmer’s market and later into a year-round store. By Sandy’s era, the store was a pillar of the community. So, when Uncle Paul asked how he could help, Grampy told Paul to go weed the garden. “There are always more weeds to be pulled, and it’s easy work that any guy can do.”

But Uncle Paul didn’t know how anything about weeds. Which was a weed and which was a food plant? According to the family legend, Grampy told him, “Just ask your voices to tell you.” So Uncle Paul took a walk around the garden with Grampy and they talked about the plants and the weeds, but after that, Uncle Paul worked solo, tending the rows with a rhythmic, quiet intensity. He took over the whole garden and with someone working the garden full time, it all grew smoothly.

Uncle Paul explained that some of the plants told him they weren’t weeds. The plants told him if he took good care of them and gave them a home that they would grow up and be useful.

“Replant us” the voices had said.
“That’s crazy,” everyone else said.

“Uncle Paul didn’t just pull a weed; he’d hold it up to his ear like a seashell, nodding along to some invisible argument before tucking it into a new patch of dirt.”
At first it was just little clumps of grass. Uncle Paul had lots clumps of grass growing where tomatoes were supposed to be. He noticed a place at the edge of the yard with bare spots on bare earth. They were baked hard as brick, cracked into jagged puzzles.. So instead of throwing the weedy clumps on a pile, Uncle Paul said the grass asked to be planted in the bare spot, so he replanted the clumps of grass where the earth was bare. It grew. “He didn’t see a mess of undesirable crabby grass; he saw a ‘mending carpet’ for the bald earth by the shed.” Paul tucked the ‘weeds’ in, and soon the dusty grey earth was hidden under a shimmering, lime-green carpet that felt like damp silk underfoot.”

Uncle Paul planted the first of the store’s famous wildflower beds. He used to say If you’re pulling weeds out from a tomato or strawberries bed, it’s worth sorting through those weeds and replanting useful ones. They’re only weeds if you haven’t figured out their utility.
It was Uncle Paul who created the first of the store’s famous wild herb gardens. When Sandy looked around the farm store, it was odd that most of the herbs they sold in Sandy’s family’s store were grown in wild herb beds that Uncle Paul had created from the weeds he had pulled out of the vegetable garden. While Uncle Paul’s family kicked him out because of his demonic voices, in fact the voices were the very foundation of the farm store.

To Paul, the garden wasn’t quiet. It was a roar of requests. The dry rattle of seed pods sounded like a crowd whispering secrets, and the hiss of the wind through the tall grass was the voices arguing about who got the most sun. According to Uncle Paul, The voices didn’t come from the air. He said they seemed to vibrate to soles of his bare feet, a low-frequency vibration that told him exactly where the roots were thirsty. The plants were all his friends. He treated them with respect. When Uncle Paul pulled up a plant, he didn’t yank it. He reach into the soil with his hands, down on either side of the plant and gentle lift it until the cool, damp white threads of the roots gave way with a faint, velvety snap.

The plants respected him. It wasn’t a neat row of pots; or lines of corn stalks neatly spaced. The garden was a riot of textures. You had the furry, silver leaves of Mullein, the sticky, resinous buds of St. John’s Wort, and the fine, feathery lace of Yarrow that caught the morning dew like tiny diamonds. And the smell of the garden was a riot of different scents. Sandy remembered the smell of that corner—a mix of cloying sweetness and the sharp, metallic tang of a coming fever. In Uncle Paul’s garden the voices didn’t just whisper; they sang in a high, dissonant key that made your teeth ache.”

Uncle Paul created the wild berry garden and the wild salad garden. In fact, almost all the plants the store sold were plants that Uncle Paul had pulled out as weeds and replanted in one of his special beds. “Uncle Paul wouldn’t touch the Devil’s Trumpet with his bare hands. He’d wrap his fingers in a rag and whisper to it like he was calming a rabid dog.

Sandy remembered Grampy saying that Uncle Paul would hold a spindly sprout between his thumb and forefinger—feeling the tiny, prickly hairs on the stem—and ask the air, ‘Would its mother call it a weed?’ before deciding its fate.

‘Would its mother call it a weed?’

Almost all the wildflowers and herbs have medicinal properties; you just need to know which one is which and what it does.

By Sandy’s time, Grampy and Uncle Paul were both long passed away but everyone said Uncle Paul’s voices had started the whole thing. The voices of the plants in his crazy head told him how to organize the garden, so the whole family’s herb and wildflower business grew out of Uncle Paul’s plant voices talking to him.

When Sandy was younger, he had the task of pulling up weeds and figuring out what to do with each plant. He had to learn all the plants; color of leaves, shape of leaves, spacing on the step, structure of the stem, all of it. And he had to know which to replant where, so he came to know the plants.

Now that he was older, Sandy worked in the farm store and at the counter. The store was a cramped, aromatic maze where the scent of dried lavender clung to your clothes and the floorboards creaked under the weight of heavy wooden bins filled with crinkly medicinal roots.
People came to the farm store, and they trusted Sandy to know the plants. Not just the flowers, herbs and food plants, people came to the family farm store and got advice on what plant to take for their ailments.

Sandy wasn’t sure if Paul was a blood-uncle or just one of those wandering souls the tide of the Great Depression had washed up on Grampy’s porch. Paul’s own kin had traded him for a prayer, convinced the murmurs in his head were demons. But Grampy just saw a man who needed a room and a shovel.

When told to weed the garden, Paul didn’t see enemies to be executed. He saw refugees. While the rest of the world saw a tangle of unwanted green, Paul heard a choir. ‘Replant us,’ the voices hissed through the stalks of wild Bergamot and Yarrow.

Today, Sandy stands behind the same counter Uncle Paul built. When Mandy comes in asking for something to treat her, “it rhymes with lamps and tramps” Sandy doesn’t reach for a bottle of aspirin. He reaches for the legacy of a man who listened to the dirt.

Sandy reached into the bin labeled ‘Sticky Willy’ and peeled a clump of it off his sleeve; the plant’s tiny hooks grabbed his sweater and hung on. He added a sprig of Mouse-Ear Hawkweed, with its fuzzy leaves like soft, warm skin against his palm. He added a bunch of Mugwort and blended it all into a large tea bag.

“Here,” Sandy told Mandy, sliding the dried leaves bundle across the wood. The Sticky Willy will hold the dream in place so you don’t forget it, and the Mouse-Ear… well, that’s so you can hear what the dream is trying to tell you. Just mind the smell; it’s a bit like an old library that’s been left out in the rain. “Mugwort will settle your stomach, but fair warning—it opens the door to the kind of dreams Uncle Paul used to have.'”