From an interesting blog I just recently noticed, North Coast Cafe, comes this link to an article on the zen of weeding:
Weeding gives me the satisfaction of bringing order, however momentary, to one small corner of the cosmos. With pruning shears in hand, I can even reshape that corner, trimming an overgrown bush, balancing a lopsided flowering tree. If I have time and vision and fertilizer enough, I can create my own backyard arboretum.
It’s funny how gardening is as much about eliminating or killing plants as it is about growing them. For every flower or shrub I plant I must dig out and compost ten more. Some of them I can’t identify and they may even be great plants, like the goldenrods I wrote about yesterday that I kept pulling up. But mostly I know what they are. An awful lot of them are trees - pecan trees, elm trees, hackberries, redbuds. This would soon be a forest if left to its own devices. There are also plants that I’ve introduced that are nice but just too prolific. I have way too much yarrow and ruellia.
Besides weeding I have been dividing the irises lately. Many of my irises that I planted years ago are now getting shaded out by shrubs that have grown up. I enjoy pushing my fingers down into the soft soil and pulling the bulbs out by hand. I’ve got a new bed alongside the driveway waiting for them. While I am at it I have been cutting off the old decaying leaves from the irises I am leaving behind.
People who have gardeners are missing out on the best part of having a garden. It rests my mind to do these little repetitive tasks, like pinching off the deadheads on the roses. I even enjoy getting out the lawnmower on mild afternoons like we are having now.
Comments (2)
You can have your lawn, bill. (Achoo!) I’ll stick to my cacti collection in pots.
Been thinking a lot about how we try to turn the landscape into something else, such as we try to make our gated communities here in California into little New Englands and our golf courses into Scotland. I’ve been mentally exploring the consequences of this and trying to envision what a genuinely “California garden” would look like. Certainly, we would choose bunch grasses over blue grass and dichondra. How would we order it? How we would keep the thrill of creating one’s own place in a garden and still stay true to the natural world surrounding us?
There’s been some crosstalk on this between me and Camassia. What’s your Texas perspective on this? Can a satisfying garden be had using only native plants even in dry places?
Depends on how dry it is I think. But I think you can make a beautiful garden using the native plants in most any environment.