March 30, 2018 – Disappointment and surprise in
the garden
Wire
grass! I have to admit, it has worn me
out and I give up. I am going to “let it
go home to Mombasa,” in a give-up on something when I have tried my best to get
it to work. [I am alluding to the scene where the character, Karen Blixen, in the
movie Out of Africa is standing in the rain and the dam is breaking and she
stops her natives from shoring up the dam and acquiesces to letting the dam
dissolve into the water flowing to Mombasa.]
Well,
that is how I feel about the ugly green rectangular well house in the front lawn. I hate it. Everyone on our street hates theirs – as that is where the health
department placed them in relation to our septic system and leach fields. First, I tried shrubs around it to camouflage
it. That worked okay until the shrubs go
so big my husband could not mow around it. Those were yanked out and I cut out
the sod, which was predominantly wiregrass and built up a two-foot wide garden around
the square well house. I tried spring
tulips and iris. Still, the wire grass
persisted. It has been a running battle with the wiregrass for several years
now. You can’t spray it to kill it or
deter it in any way that I have found.
It simply re-grows or sweeps in from the lawn similar to Kudzu.
The
last round – a few years ago – I put out 48 orange tiger lilies. The well house
garden looked good for the few weeks around the Fourth of July for a few years. But, still, I was weeding every month trying
to keep the wire grass from encroaching.
Then,
last October, the gardens were neglected for almost a month because of my
tending to my Mom’s house, breaking down her household and cleaning out the
house and getting it ready for market.
Nothing was done down here for one month, then another month.
That
was all it took; two months of wire grass and swoosh – thick as an expensive
Mohawk carpet right up to the well house and even mounding up in waves, as it
wants to swallow the well house whole.
Underneath
that luxurious mat of wiregrass were 100 or so orange tiger lilies asleep
through this wet winter. Walking the dog, I have noticed the bulbs glossy green
foliage poking up out of the wiregrass mixed with contrasting clumps of soft lamb’s
ears. I studied the wiregrass knowing I
would have a battle on my hands in the spring.
Yesterday
was the skirmish with the wiregrass carpet and it won. I sat back on my heels after I’d weeded the
henbit and other succulent weeds that love to run and take over the four-inch
growth of the lilies and around the lamb’s ear clumps. Two hours and all that I was able to accomplish was pulling the succulent weeds out of the well house circle. I netted a full wheelbarrow of
weeds and came to a realization. “I am done with this garden.” The now tan wire grass has a few little green
tips protruding, but when you try to pull it out – it is fixed as if in
cement. I stood up and dusted off my
knees and with hands on my hips I finally said aloud to no one but myself, “Forget
it, let it go home to Mombasa”. I’ve
knocked my head against this problem for several years now and it is not worth
the time and effort.
It
is always hard for me to swallow failure.
The rest of this season, I will be merely going along and cutting the
wiregrass down, by hand in and around the lilies so that they successfully
bloom and then allow the stems to mature.
In the late fall I will take a pick axe and dig up the lilies and plant
them somewhere else and then leave this well house unadorned and UGLY for rest
of my gardening days. It is not worth
the effort – I have to chock it up to failure.
I
walked around to another part of the garden hoping to find something to cheer
me up after such a failure.
It
didn’t take long. I went down to the Zen
garden and found my Siberian Iris are coming up nicely. I was delighted to find the Colchicums that
were planted two years ago making a showing. [See my October 10, 2016 – Surprises
in the Fall Garden - blog for the history of these bulbs.]
I
planted these in the fall of 2016 and in the spring of 2017, I could hardly
find them. I wasn’t sure if moles had
eaten them or possibly deer. I spotted
only a handful of leaves and was about to yank them out. But, my sentimentality
got the best of me and I thought, the few that are left, might actually get
bigger in a few years. Let me wait and
see.
Fast
forward to yesterday. Lush strappy green
leaves, I counted 18 or 20 when I had planted 28 [to match my calendar birthday]. WOW, how nice – I hope to get a lovely show
this fall when they show off their pretty pinky purple petals.
My
big failure was softened by a lovely surprise.
That is the nature of the full cycle of a gardener’s life; a disappointment
on one thing, then a lovely surprise from another.
Even though I have
been gardening now for decades, I’ve got to learn to take it all in stride and
press on with renewed optimism.
Happy
Easter to you.
A
fresh spring brings forth fresh optimism
in
this old gardener.
