The Persistence of grass

Tulips April 26th

Delphiniums are doing well...

Maltese cross and columbines have sprouted

Monkshood has sprouted

Rhubarb is up first!

Once the rainstorms abated this week, and the sun shone bravely, albeit weakly again, it was wonderful how fresh and green everything looked! My new tulips (planted last fall) finally trusted the weather enough to pop open! They are a deep red color with black centres. The rest are not that far behind.

I can't recall if I planted all the same type of tulips or not. I need to dig out my gardening journal and see what I wrote last fall. I used to believe that I would remember all theses types of things about my gardening from one season to the next, but I learned the hard way that it is a loooong stretch of time from October when the snow flies, and April when it melts again.

The tulips were beat hands down by the dandelions, though. Three tulips blooming ( so far) versus 8 dandelions. Because of all the birds and wildlife around our acreage I don't use chemicals on my lawn or garden. When the dandelions start to bother me, I go after them with a narrow trowel and dig them out by hand. Back breaking work, yes, and I admit, in all my years of gardening I have never won the dandelion wars; maybe the occasional battle, but in the end, the dandelions always prevail! I haven't got enough time or energy to eradicate them all, but I console myself with the thought that there are some birds and/ or insects out there that benefit from dandelions (aren't there????)

My other very stubborn and even more persistent nemesis is grass roots. You have to grudgingly admire its ability to grow against all odds in every crevice and corner, no matter how hard a person tries to prevent it; Like a bad virus that seems to mutate and get stronger and more invasive the harder you work against it! I have been stubbornly digging out grass shoots sprouting in my now freshly rained-upon flower beds all week with a big shovel, small trowel, whatever works. I'm floored by how long some of the grass roots are once you start pulling one end out. At the very least, it's a job that has much more success if its done after a rain when the soil is soft. But grass is so resilient that if you even miss one tiny little root it morphs overnight into a veritable lawn in the flower bed, or so it seems.

I use a handy laundry basket out in the garden to fill up with grass and weeds as I work away. I like the handles on it to cart it around and the holes in the sides to easily dump out any accumulated water when it gets left out in the rain in between weedings (which I admit it often seems to do).

I have completed the weeding of one of my large beds, my two tiered rock garden bed and part of the long narrow perennial bed in the middle of the yard. You would think that I was getting ahead in the grass weeding game, wouldn't you, but alas! It seems that each morning Mother Nature has sprouted even more grass in areas that I thought I had already finished weeding. Eventually though, the perennials get tall enough that the grass blends in better and I come away with the illusion that I am done weeding! :)