I Fought the Woods...

Despite the gardener's best intentions, Nature will improvise. ~Michael P. Garafalo, gardendigest.com

Many things grow in the garden that were never sown there. ~Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732

Yesterday was our first and last nice day for a while -- they're predicting overcast and rain for the next week (Um... hello...isn't it summer?), so I decided to get out and WORK. I played hookey from the computer for most of the day and DD and I tackled some of the big tasks.

The hardest, by far, was cutting back the woods where it is infringing on our cultivated spaces. The way things grow here should be legend. Truthfully, if we abandoned our house today and no one did anything, we could come back two years later and it would look as though no one had every laid a blade to the earth (this actually happened to a house down the road -- the people left it and in a little over a year, you almost couldn't SEE the house for all the vegetation).

So, I went to my back woods garden with shovel, clippers and strong resolve.


The poor garden is so overgrown and full of weeds that my plants are barely surviving. They are full of weeds (especially blueberry and raspberry bushes, not to mention TONS of grass) and I felt like a bad mother. I decided to clear cut everything for about two feet back from the garden. This is not as easy as it may sound.



DD's job was to snip down the trees that had grown too close, mine was to dig up the earth and get the stumps out. Then we would line the back of the garden with rocks (which, we discovered, I had done once before -- but you couldn't see them because they were covered with rotting leaves and growth).

We worked and worked and WORKED. We were eaten by bugs (despite a nice coating of bug spray), we were filthy and tired and sore. But WE DID IT.







Now you can SEE the plants (though we didn't accomplish much actual weeding of the gardens -- we pulled the worst, but there is still MUCH work to be done). Still, I discovered my columbine:



And dianthus:



And foxglove:



And many other perennials that aren't blooming yet.

Speaking of blooming -- my milkweed is about ready to burst! I can't wait -- it smells SO amazing I wish I could bottle it up and wear it.



And, as promised, a picture of the growing pillars -- almost HALF are green now (instead of "bird poop" black and white):



We still have two that are so tiny you can barely see them -- they are the ones that were actually brownish when we found them. We must have found them the moment they hatched.

No more butterbabies on the rue yet -- but we look when we can. I'm waiting for DD to remember that my SIL has TONS of dill and that is where we found the bulk of our pillars from last year. And, no, I'm not reminding her, lol, but we're going over there for a Father's Day bash on Sunday, so I bet she realizes it then!

Have a great day.

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You Are Chips and Salsa

You are energetic and a real go getter. You can even be aggressive at times. You love taking risks and taking the rewards. You are a true daredevil. You can be a bit greedy in life, and you go after what you want. You are courageous and edgy. You will do what others are afraid of.

What Mexican Food Are You?

Huh... okay.

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