The vegetable bed is not very difficult to weed. It's probably the easiest bed I have actually, except for one thing: thistles. Big prickly stabby thistles that if left alone long enough will form a solid carpet of agony across the surface of my small vegetable bed. Coincidentally, these same thistles inhabit Ian's rock garden, and not content with inhabiting by ones or twos, they generally try to take the space over and conquer it for their own.
I didn't have thistles when I first moved in. I didn't have them for several years in fact, other than the occasional oddman weed here and there. But then my neighbor-lady put up a finch feeder and filled it with thistle seed. It's supposed to be sterile seed, meaning it can't start a plant, but the year that thistle feeder went up is the year I started having trouble with thistles. And such trouble it has been.
Did you know that thistles can get very large, tall enough to be measure in feet? Did you know that they can draw blood through just about any pair of garden gloves? Did you know that their roots go into the earth for miles and miles and only one thistle out of fifty will actually "come up by the roots"? I have learned these things well. Thistles also have an uncanny gift of camouflage. Many's the time I have just finished weeding and am wandering about enjoying the clean garden feeling when suddenly there it is - a giant looming thistle right in the middle of it all. How did I miss that? I was right there weeding away, there's no way I could have missed it. Yet of course I did, and now even though I have put away my basket and dandelion weeder and gloves I must dive in to pull it out, and end up with thorns in my thumb and a mile of thistle root left in the earth.
The other constant weed in my yard is grass. Jeff is the grass man, and he feeds it and puts various granules guaranteed to prevent crabgrass on it and removes dandelions that dare to grow in it. And he mows carefully, horizontally this week, vertically next, and diagonally the next. He loves his grass so much that even though he never watered it - for some reason that has always been my job - even though he never watered it, we installed one of those in-ground sprinkler systems a couple years ago just to make sure the precious grass was well taken care of. That's all well and good of course, except that this pampered, spoiled grass won't stay put. Not content with all this tender loving care it receives as lawn, it feels the need to invade my gardens as weed. Resulting in things like the big edging task being necessary that I've been doing this spring.
There are a couple other weeds that have prominence here. Nettle, for instance. I don't have much, and I have a sharp eye for recognizing this stuff, but I dislike it intensely. It grows near my Queen of the Prairie, and even though I pull it immediately and it always seems to come out by the root, it always comes back. And invariably it rubs against my inner forearm as I yank it out, cleverly bypassing the barrier of my gloves, and so still manages to make me itchy and uncomfortable.
Crabgrass is an annoyance, but doesn't particularly bother me, probably because I enjoy pulling out those loooong white roots. It's a very satisfying activity, especially if I can get a footlong length out at once.
There is another weed, a viny weed, that grows under the landing to my deck, and it launches itself onto the plants that surround the landing. Every summer I yank tens of feet of this stuff off. It tears so easily that I never get to the root, so it always comes back. It's not hard to deal with, it's just so persistent; I wish it would die and get it over with.
My favorite weed, if there can be such a thing, is surely the dandelion. One plant is big and looks messy, but it takes just a second to pop it out and suddenly everything looks much better. The dandelion weeder is aptly named because it works so well on these; one little lever action and the whole weeds just pops right out of the ground. Minimal effort, lots of reward.
There are other weeds of course that pop up here and there. Notably, the garden plants that "got away", like Gooseneck Loosestrife and Missouri Primrose and Tansy and Purple Phlox and Sweet Annie. Sweet Annie I was actually a little too dedicated against and now I don't have any left. I wonder if I can buy seeds for this? It's a lovely plant, grows about 3 feet high with feathery greenness, but it's big charm is that it smells exactly like Trident gum. Exactly. I mean, a blind smell test would not be able to detect the difference. Plus, it's just about perfect for supplying greenery in arrangements, and in the fall it looks beautiful when put in a pumpkin as a vase.
Hmm. I may have to go online for a little seed-shopping.
But then won't I have the same problem as before when Sweet Annie was coming up everywhere, and it took a two year full scale attack to beat it back? Huh. I'll have to think this through. Otherwise that desirable plant will once again be back on my weed list, and next year this time I'll be complaining about all the Sweet Annie popping up everywhere, and wondering what on earth I was thinking.
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