Metaphor.

 

Above is a photograph of a tomato plant.

Not just any tomato plant.  An heirloom cherry tomato plant.  Growing up through gravel between our compost and recycling cans, respectively.  

We didn't plant it.

The kids planted some of the same seeds elsewhere in the garden, for fun, I didn't think we'd need a garden this year: I planned to be in Texas or something by now.  We didn't cultivate any of the seeds.  And yet... up they sprang.  Two little plants that the kids buried one day, and this one: the one that shouldn't be here.

It grew, as you can see, into a monstrous plant, yielding a multitude of delectable cherry tomatoes.  Towering over its legitimate brothers in the "real garden".  I didn't weed around it.  I didn't have to - no weeds were growing in the gravel with a weed barrier.  Just this one, strong, valiant plant.  The one that shouldn't have ever been.

It wasn't in the plan, you see.