Wow. Blogger is totally different. And the season has shifted into hot weather. The world is moving toooo fast! Not really, I’m just a bit slow; can’t believe how much time since my last post.
I planted a few more trees, the bald cypress -which I’m very excited about, and the other Prairiefire Crabapple. I weeded a little, but the weeds are terribly ahead of me now. It reminds me of something I read in an interesting garden book this week, Gardens of the Heartland. This book is a hybrid garden picture book, historical information, and travel guide to Midwest Gardens and Arboretums. It has a portion on the W. J. Beal Botanical Garden, in which it quotes about Beal:
Raised a Quaker, Beal was said to have had three enemies in life—“alcohol, tobacco, and quack grass.”
I thought of that due to the fact that I can identify…quack grass being my nemesis of the moment. I fight wars with it every year, and this year it is ahead of me…. but I have plans, I tell you. Plans.
Yes. I am going to renovate the part where it is the worst. I don’t care that it has heated up to July temperatures with dry winds…. I intend to dig up that part of the garden and pull out all the worthwhile plants, then dig out all that nasty white root by hand and fork.
I realize that this is only one battle and that my hatred of using roundup means I will again face grass trying to defeat my garden efforts next year, again. But I have in my memory an old Italian gardener from my former neighborhood. Granted it was a city lot, but it was immaculate. No weeds. I asked him once how he had accomplished that, and he told me that every year he makes sure to keep after the garden and root out the weeds and that every year there has been less.
I bet he lived there for a good fifty years.
The point, though, is that tirelessly rooting out weeds and not letting them go to seed, filling their spaces with better plants, will pay off. Besides, if I spray the area I would lose my hellebore and small bulbs stand.
I need to buy my tomatoes and peppers and get them in now, the soil is definitely warm enough.
By the way, the porch plans are off for this year, which is just as well as I dreaded the idea of moving that birdsnest spruce… and the other things. My husband felt it was too much too take on. Have to respect others limits. Or should I say “no use beating a dead horse”. No, I shouldn’t say that. The old gray mare ain’t what she used to be either……
