It’s spring again. It means the sun is shining, the wind is
cool, and the temperatures are in the 50s. Perfect gardening weather.
So I’ve been assessing. And come to some decisions.
First, an enemy who
feels great hatred towards me has obviously spread seeds of unknown origin
everywhere. My “lawn” is now a weed patch. I’m not even sure it’s salvageable.
But this is March, so I’m feeling positive and taking dominion over my gardening kingdom.
I’ve proclaimed “Death to Weeds.” No doubt,this will last until the end of May.
Then, I’ll wave the white flag and have a glass of iced tea.
Second, all my roses have to go. This breaks my heart. Our
house is a 1920s cottage, so I planted a hedge of knockout roses around it. It
was bliss for six years. On the seven year, stealth mites infected my roses with
rose rosette virus. And there is no cure. My husband Cal removed one side of
the rose bushes and we planted grape vines. Cal has another 12 or 13 bushes to
dig out and then we’ll plant reblooming weigela. I’ve warned the weigela that
it better bloom beautifully and resist all manner of pests.
Third, I really hate our massive magnolia tree. It’s huge
and ancient. Two things that should make me like it. But it’s also a Southern
magnolia, which means I spend a large portion of my gardening time cleaning up
after it. In the spring, I have to clean up all the dead leaves—they’re thick
and leathery, so they don’t mulch. In fact, I have no doubt they’d survive the
Apocalypse (along with cockroaches). In summer, the tree drops its flowers—also
huge, gooey, and non-mulchable. And in the fall, it drops massive prickly pods
that have to be picked up by hand. When Luke and Ariel move to grad school this
summer, I suspect that they’ll do the happy dance because they’ll no longer have to hear me say, “Slave labor
time—we’re picking up pods.”
On the other hand, I sure there will be a lot of pods that
need picking up over Thanksgiving holidays. It’ll be a pods-for-turkey kind of
thing.
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| Magnolia pod courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. |
