WEEDS EVERYWHERE
This year our area has had a long, cool spring. As the result, the spring flowers have lingered. Plants that don’t usually flower at the same time are blooming simultaneously, giving the entire area the appearance of one big flower show. The last of the magnolias are colliding with the lilacs. Pansies linger while roses slowly make their way from bud to bloom. Life in the garden would be perfection if it weren’t for one thing—I haven’t seen much of my garden in weeks and it is a mess.
It happens to everyone from time to time. The press of daily business gets a little out of hand and the weeds, opportunistic creatures that they are, take advantage. I know several gardeners who were forced to neglect their plants after being laid low by illness or family emergencies. When those same gardeners finally got back to their flowers and vegetables, they found that Nature had unleashed its full energies on formerly tidy plots, with crabgrass spreading its claws far and wide and ordinary lawn grass invading the beds. It doesn’t even take that long for havoc to break out.
And havoc is alive and well in my garden. Onion grass thrives on cool spring weather and the specimens on my property have grown to previously unimagined heights. In fact, the onion grass is almost as tall as some of the dandelions. Wild buttercup, a pretty but nefariously invasive plant, has insinuated its way into several beds in the back garden. It is a great camouflage artist, snuggling up to the hardy geraniums with leaves that are very similar in size and shape. Removing wild buttercup is hard work and removing it without disturbing the geraniums is even harder. I have seen the groundhog near the buttercup/geranium field of combat and he appears to nibble the buttercup leaves. However, it is clear that the groundhog has no intention of earning his keep—or my affection–by deterring the buttercups. It is time to put another pan of used cat litter down his hole.
Being a suburbanite, I have used the little available outdoor time to keep up appearances, doing routine chores like grass mowing and edging with the string trimmer. But the privet hedge is getting unruly and I catch my neighbor looking at it with undisguised scorn. Worse yet, all one billion seeds generated by the maple in the front yard have germinated and seventy five percent of them are growing up into the hedge, joining equally thuggish pals like oriental bittersweet and wild grape. The rest of the seedlings are popping up throughout the beds, flexing their muscles in a mass demonstration of the incredible fecundity of the Norway maple. English ivy, while not officially a weed, is definitely another opportunist, sending tendrils up the sides of the house and attempting to girdle several unsuspecting rose bushes. I try to pull up some ivy every day, even if I only have five minutes. The current climate conditions have made it worse than kudzu.
So what can be done when it will be weeks before I have enough time to get down to serious weed eradication and garden taming? My emergency plan starts with a trip all the way around the garden at least once a day. Longer hours of daylight make this possible, even when my schedule is completely out of control. I keep the garden knife next to the door, housed in a large plant pot, so I can take both with me on my daily tour. With my garden weapon in hand, I can dig the most egregious weeds and cut off the truly wayward growth as I go. If I have fifteen extra minutes and it isn’t five am in the morning or ten at night, I can get out my hedge trimmer and discipline a few linear yards of privet hedge. It is not my favorite task, but it is necessary if I don’t want to get thrown out of the suburbanites’ union.
The plants in my holding area are still unplanted, but it only takes a few minutes to water them thoroughly. If I have fifteen minutes and it is too early or late for hedge trimming, I plant something, simultaneously easing my own guilt and freeing at least one plant’s crowded roots.
The beauty of a cottage-type garden like mine is that it is supposed to look a little unruly, with plants blurring the hard edges and drifts of various varieties bumping up against each other. The flip side of all that romanticism is that it can easily turn into a riot of unfettered botanical chaos. It is hard to stay calm when all you can do is watch that happen.
When I get twitchy about the chaos, I remind myself that gardens should not be about guilt and that barring further dramatic events, I will get back to weeding, mulching and setting things to rights in a few more weeks.. When I finally get dirt under my nails again, the newly-neatened beds will be twice as gratifying. In the meantime, the roses will bloom no matter what. That alone should be enough to stop my twitching—at least temporarily.