All the pretty flowers!

Decapitation.

Though I was only little, I distinctly remember sitting on the grass in the garden of my Nana's house and her elderly neighbour walking by and stopping at the gate for a chat. "Look at all the lovely dandelions", he said smilingly to me. "They're weeds", I informed him. "No", he said, "they're just flowers in the wrong place."
Today as I set about mowing the meadow that the front lawn had become after relentless rain and consequent growth spurts, I couldn't help feeling a little bit sad and even guilty. Buttercups and daisies and some delightfully delicate and pretty little blue and white flowers became mush in the grass box of the lawnmower, leaving nothing but green stalks that blended into the grass and giving no hint of what they used to be. In the sense that weeds are wild plants that grow where they're not wanted, the lawn had certainly been weed-infested. Because one is meant to eradicate weeds from flowerbeds and lawns, I mowed them; I chopped their pretty little heads off. Not before spending a few minutes happily lying amongst them with the dog in the sunshine though and whispering to them that they'd be far better off growing themselves out in the field. They'd only run the risk of being eaten by a horse out there and then I wouldn't feel like an executioner of the beautiful.*