• Tag Archives weeds

  • Quack Will Inherit the Earth

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    42  bar steady 30.28  0mph WNW  windchill 42  Autumn

    Waxing Gibbous Blood Moon

    That damned quack.  It has begun to overtake our new plantings.  So, purity to the wind.  If it warms up to 60 degrees, we’ll hit it with Roundup.  Then again.  And, probably, given the tenacious qualities of quack grass, again quackgrass_rhizome2300.jpgnext spring.

    Over the years I have become a grudging fan of these hardy herbaceous plants, the weeds.  Without sophisticated gardening intervention they thrive; in fact, they often thrive in spite of it.   They are true survivors and give succor to anyone worried about humankind’s ultimate effect on the planet.

    Herbicide us.  Nuke us.  Poison Gas.  Plague.  Quack grass and creeping charlie will soldier on.  I have not yet read The World Without Us but if it’s honest, it will tell the tale of a world dominated by weeds.  Only they will not be weeds anymore, since a weed is a plant out of place.  No, The World Without Us will be quack world, dandelion heaven, creeping charlie nirvana.  Long may they reign.

    Until then, however, I want to get the damned stuff out of my young orchard.

    Right now I have no Sierra Club responsibilities, except my last rounds of stranger phone calls ever.  I have no tours for which I have to prepare.  My sermons have left the computer and entered the world.  So for the next week or so I can devote myself to finishing up gardening chores, cleaning up my spaces infected with piles and perhaps catching up on a bit of reading.

    Speaking of that, I have a recommendation for those of you who like literature and mysteries:  The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, by Swedish author Steig Larson.  A smart mystery and an intriguing look into contemporary Swedish life.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden Literature 📎and tagged

  • Vineland Place

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    74  bar steady  29.89  4mph NNE dew-point 64   Summer, warmish and stickyish

    Full Thunder Moon

    Ah, the power of suggestion.  Especially from a spouse.  Spent an hour and a half clearing burdock, nettles, black locust, burrs, climbing wild cucumbers and virginia creeper from the site of the soon to be firepit cum family gathering spot.  An area in which everything has been removed invites the emergence of those plants whose seeds or rhizomes remain in the soil.

    Over the last few rainy, hot weeks nettles have taken nourishment from the former compost heap to grow large, reaching for the sun and laden with formic acid to prevent uprooting.   The wild cucumber which climbs, then produces lacy transparent fruit liked the compost as did the virginia creeper.

    While yanking on the long above ground runs of vine and pulling out their equally long runs of below the soil surface roots/rhizomes, I decided to change the name of our property from 7 Oaks, named for the 7 Oaks on the hill outside my writing room window, to Vineland Place.  I have no idea why, but our property is the ideal happy home for vines:  wild cucumbers, Virginia creeper and wild grape.  The wild grape in particular grows vines thicker than my upper arm (OK, so I’m not Ahnold, but still).  We have nurtured a wild  grape that has chosen the six foot fence we had put in the front after Celt began climbing the fence to go greet the neighbors on walks by our house.  At 200 pounds Celt, an Irish Wolfhound, was not a pleasant surprise, though in manner gentle and loving.

    As the CO2 level rises with global warming, it favors vines.  I do not recall why.  I could not help but recall this piece of trivia as I drove through Alabama, Mississippi and Lousiana where kudzu has a presence akin to an alien invader.  It grows over lower shrubs and covers the entire highway easement up to the drainage ditches on divided highways.  In more than one case I saw old homes, uninhabited (I think), shrouded under the green of this conqueror vine.

    Jon did many projects around Vineland Place when he lived here.  One of the early ones was to cut back the large grape vines that had begun to strangle the oak, ironwood, ash, elm, pin cherry and poplar that make up our woods.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Our Land and Home Travel 📎and tagged