Garden Rebellion

My garden is a big fat mess. A couple of friends pulled some weeds while I was in China, but it's been months since I've done a really good weeding. My biggest weed right now? Baby oak trees. I swear that I could stand in the garden and watch them sprout, one by one, popping their leafy little heads up in the middle of a hosta or a primrose or a creeping phlox. They sprout incognito, blending in with their host for a short time, just long enough to send down long roots that break through the acorn they started from. I go out daily to walk the garden path, hunting for baby oaks and plucking them from their hiding places. I'm afraid that if I miss even one day, a mighty oak forest will engulf my garden.

But this is not weeding. Not really. Tonight I started that task. On hands and knees, I weeded about 36 square feet of garden, digging up evil weeds like violets and dandelions. These nasty little Intruders are not native to my garden; they hopped the fence from my neighbors' yard a year ago, and they've been reproducing ever since. I also dug up a perennial that had gone invasive: a Japanese anemone. It sat quietly for years, minding its own business. This spring, it started to travel. I like to think it's trying to hop the fence to live in the neighbor's yard (touché), but it's really just trying to out populate its perennial neighbors, the Dilly Dally lavender and the purple coneflower. I got the pitch fork out and stabbed at the earth around the anemone until I could pull out chunks. Unfortunately, this plant has roots that defy destruction. I feel certain that after the next good rain, I'll find it sprouting again.

Tomorrow I'll see if I can make more progress out there, but it's hard. The garden is 13 this year, an unruly teenager. It seems hellbent on rebellion; I'm just another adult, intent on keeping my teenager away from--that's right: weed.






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