My sister Jacqui is an avid flower gardener. She found a surprise in her flower bed this spring, however.

“I was working to get all the plants in the ground we had just picked up at Shea’s. I look over at the Peony plant I have on the east side of the bed and see something that does NOT belong there. I thought I knew what it was, but could not believe it was actually there. I asked John and he went into look online if there were other photos. Our neighbors checked it out and agreed, we had a marijuana plant growing in our beds. It has since been disposed off.”

I have a funny marijuana story for you.

(No, Bill, it has nothing to do with the definition of “inhale.”)

When I was young, my friend Machelle (the pastor’s daughter) and I took turns spending Sunday afternoons at each other’s houses. One Sunday, while at her house, we decided to pretend we were in the jungle. We went around to the back alley behind the house where there were tall weeds and a lot of overgrowth from the abandoned lot.

There was burnweed.

Burnweed doesn’t really look like a marijuana plant, though it does have a five-pointed spiky leaf.

“Machelle,” I said solemnly, “this is pot.”

Keep in mind I was a highly sheltered church kid, as was she, and there was no way I really would know. Both Machelle and I, however, read a lot of John Benton books and we felt we were fairly accomplished in understanding what happened in the drug world.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Her brother Tim, who was smart, was skeptical. “I think it’s burnweed.”

“It is not!” I said, protesting repeatedly that I was right.

“I think it’s burnweed,” he said again.

“I will prove that it isn’t,” I said, and I reached out and grabbed several handfuls. “We’ll see if I get a reaction to this.” I rubbed it all over my hands and lower arms. We waited for a reaction. We waited.

“Does it burn?”

“No,” I said.

I actually didn’t have any reaction to it. Not at all. But, when we brought it in to show Machelle’s mom (since no Assembly of God pastor would want a huge pot crop behind his house without being aware of it so that it could be disposed of!) she sort of shrieked.

“Get that burnweed out of here!”

That’s my pot story.

Well, that and several instructors and fellow students in the art department at college. But we’ll let that be.