Jenny was raised by her biological mother and adoptive father in the suburb of Clifton Park, New York. They added two children over the years, making Jenny the eldest of three.

Intending to love Jenny all the same, they did not inform her of her partial adoption. But Jenny wasn’t quite the same, and sometimes someone reminded her of that with a knowing wink, like when she was teased for being the only blonde in the family. At 17, she held her mother’s feet to the fire and learned the identity of her biological father.

My Roberts family tree is full of brothers, uncles and nephews. I grew up with aunts who didn’t worship or weren’t invited, and without a single cousin. I didn’t know what I was missing until Jenny bucked the trend. At age 30, she introduced herself to my Uncle Dave, who fathered her at a young age before later marrying and raising his two boys.

I was 20 then and I immediately understood: Jenny is the coolest. Readjusting her biological family while remaining rooted in her family of origin was not an easy path. Jenny has sparked many difficult conversations, but by investing in parenthood with an open heart, I appreciate how she consistently chooses the love of the present over the pain of the past.

I’ve spent half my life without the support of a relative, and I’m happy to report that life is better with Jenny and her offspring. Jenny is not only the wisest woman I know. She’s also like the sister I never had.

Jenny is an earth mom who does things like sending us home with lobster broth, transplants from her garden (ironweed propagation is her jam), and floral infusions. But she also knows the most fun places to swim in Casco Bay and makes sure to stop on the way back for Maine’s best ice cream (Mainely Custard).

As someone who grew up knowing only conditional love, I can’t tell you how good it feels to be able to tell Jenny everything I think, without fear of judgement.

“I hate galinsoga,” I told Jenny earlier this summer. We stood next to his tomatoes in his wild garden during our annual visit to Maine. I was a little surprised by the amount of energy I put into that statement and Jenny was too. But I thought so.

I hate galinsoga. I hate it.

And while I also hate to admit my distaste for this wild plant, I felt so invaded by galinsoga. So upset. So… frustrated, which is to say so frustrated that I can’t even form words correctly.

I have reasons. The first year I dug my new vegetable garden in a patch of Halifax forest, it was a weed-free paradise. I grew squash on 16 neat “hills” in a grid. Everything from the blue Hubbard to the Romanesa zucchini was moist and happy.

I wasn’t so happy the next year when the cucumber beetles arrived, stripping the new growth from the plants, setting them back weeks and then months. And when I finally gave birth to the squash plants, the galinsoga arrived.

Galinsoga parviflora is a virulent weed in the daisy family that goes by many names. It is easy to pull, but it is a tough opponent, producing tiny, abundant seeds with its abundant tiny yellow and white flowers.

In my garden, a single galinsoga seed had to hitch a ride with a starter plant. And then, true to another of its names – quickweed – it was everywhere. Galinsoga starts small, as inconspicuous as any other weed, then it grows by leaps and bounds. It can even choke corn!

I had already mentally calculated the buckets of vegetables I planned to cellar in this garden. The appearance of one “valiant soldier” after another – another nickname – ate away at my sense of security. I was pissed.

The seeds were already there, in the ground – thousands of them hiding. What should I do? In retrospect, mulch. But the defense didn’t appeal to me at that moment. I wanted total victory: eradication. “Let the plants come,” I said. “I’m going to remove them and put an end to the invasion.” I was determined to root out the galinsoga in any case before it produced seeds.

Every time I saw galinsoga, no matter if I was doing anything else, I picked it. I often left them there, lying in the sun. Sometimes I accumulated piles. But Galinsoga fought back. In conditions that would have left a soft weed like lamb’s-quarters wilted and brown, galinsoga was hardly disturbed. All it needed was a little contact with the soil to keep its exposed roots growing and flowering.

“Drown him,” I ordered everyone. I filled a 50-gallon plastic barrel halfway with water, and it became a mass grave for weeds, in which they rotted in a slow anaerobic stench.

Vigilance and cauldrons of rot have driven back the galinsoga. But I wasn’t aiming for balance. I was aiming for total victory and I failed. The plant came back strong the following year and the year after that. I tried not to stress about shooting each one, but there I was anyway, deep in my own cauldron of anger.

“I hate galinsoga,” I told Jenny this summer, in her garden. She was showing off her tomatoes when I noticed the threat nearby. A phalanx of galinsoga! I started “helping” Jenny by pulling the grass.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I like having it here.”

“What?” I didn’t understand.

“I harvest the tender tops,” she explained. Dried, the herb has another name: guascas taste like artichokes and are the key ingredient in ajiaco bogotano, the national dish of Colombia, an Andean stew made with potatoes, corn and chicken. Jenny not only lived with the enemy, she feasted with him.

Once upon a time, there was a stressed-out settler who roamed the rows of my garden like a general in battle. Then I had the upheaval of divorce and I let it go. This summer, after six years of fallow, I plowed my soil again.

I did it differently this time. Blue corn caught my son’s imagination. “Let’s grow it,” I said. White pumpkins that we could paint? I planted more. Long rows of orange, purple, red and white carrots, thinking about winter baby food? “Let’s plant according to the phases of the moon,” my son said, and we did.

Back home after visiting Jenny, I walked through the row of parsnips. Worry set in when I saw the telltale shoots of the hated weed. What should I do with a despised plant that Destiny surely told me I had to live with?

I broke off the tops of the tender, bright herbs and placed them in an empty yogurt pot. Back in the kitchen later, I rinsed the galinsoga, put it on my solar dehydrator, and checked the ingredient list for the Andean stew.

“Hey Jenny,” I texted Jenny. “Thanks to you, there is peace in the kingdom.” How to love a hated herb, or at least coexist with it? Jenny taught me a method: sit down and have a meal with it. Or a cup of tea – make medicine out of the plant.

Before leaving the garden that morning, I walked through the row of parsnips again. When I first harvested weeds, I had identified all their locations. On my second go around, I went back to each galinsoga plant and pulled it out. Then, I removed the soil from the roots and threw them all 10 feet into the pigsty that I had installed at the foot of the vegetable garden for this purpose.

“Munch, munch,” said our three grass-loving piglets, grunting their approval.

I sent a video to Jenny. “Also, meet my new collaborators in the Food Network. I love you!”

Who is your midwife? Email author Tristan Roberts at [email protected].