Can't keep a good weed down

Sorry for the lapse in posting. I'm working this week and was having some technical problems with Blogger yesterday. I seem to back in business again, so I'm going to post this piece even though you have to be a subscriber to read it in full, because I love the story so much. Here's the highlights.

Pot plants sprout in storefront planter

Downtown coffee shop owner Mario Trejier says he was shocked when two laughing tattooed men informed him that marijuana plants were sprinkled among the flowers in his sidewalk planters. Trejier called the cops, and the receptionist said it wasn't a police matter.

[hat tip to Tim Meehan]

He admitted his business sometimes attracts suspicious types. "They're always stockbrokers," he said.

He hasn't pulled the eight plants, one coming into bud, out of the two heavy cement planters because the unasked-for crop hasn't created any difficulties. "If this is any problem to me, I'll wheel them to Starbucks," he said.

Trejier said he wouldn't have recognized the plants, from eight-to-20-centimetres high, as marijuana. "I'm an old-fashioned guy," he said.

In some places in the US, the local law enforcement would probably form a task force over it. The Vancouver police are apparently unconcerned.

Someone may have dropped pot seeds into the planters, said Vancouver police Const. Tim Fanning. "It's fairly minor," Fanning said. "We don't have any suspects, we're not going to have any charges, so there's not really any need to tie up police resources."

When I first started LOS, I had this idea to form an inner-city guerrilla growers association. The idea is people would save their seeds instead of just throwing them out and start tossing them into planters and municipal lots. Although I planted a few myself that year, the plants all suffered disastrous accidents and never become noticeable. I enlisted a couple of people but the project never took off. I still think it's a great idea. Maybe I'll try to resurrect it again in the spring.