Sweet Renee Sews....and gardens.

A few weeks ago we had a lovely week of warm weather. It was refreshing to open up all the windows and air out the house.  Outside, the flowers got a jump start.  And so did the weeds.

Thanks to my mom, I have flowerbeds on three sides of my house.  They're filled with pretty things:  irises, bleeding hearts, day lilies, peonies, bachelor buttons, phlox, black eyed susans, columbines, hastas, blackberries... all of these things came from her gardens.  Over the course of five summers tending for these things, I've been able to identify what's a weed and what's going to be a flower.  Sometimes I can't remember though, in which case I snap a picture with my phone and text it to my brother, who shows it to my non-tech-savvy mom who proclaims whether the thing is a flower ("Yep, keep it!") or a weed ("Rip that thing out!")

There is lawn in my flowerbeds and flowers in my lawn.  It's a never ending battle.  The lawn in the flowerbeds is technically quack grass, and it spreads fast.  Last fall there was none.  Already this spring, in some spots it's crept into the beds by about a foot from the lawn edge.  I've gone after it all with a shovel and have reclaimed my flowerbeds from the quack grass.  I win!

There are little purple violets in my lawn.  Maybe they're weeds but they're prettier than dandelions so they get to stay.

Every summer it's Me vs. Creeping Charlie.  Here it is, creeping into my blog: 

I call it creepy stink weed, because that's exactly what it is.  It didn't show up until we cut down a tree in our yard, and from that spot there's so much creepy stink weed that it's taken over the lawn and crawls its way into my flowerbeds.  Already this spring I've been after it, pulling it out of the beds by the fistfuls.  The prognosis for this kind of problem isn't so great... it seems that it's impossible to kill with herbicides or by pulling by hand, as the root structure is a huge network.  You could get the plant but leave the root and it'll just come back.  Or you could get it all pulled out and some seeds of the darned thing will blow in from a neighbor's yard.

If anyone has fought Creeping Charlie and won, I'd love to hear about how you did it.  :)

And until then, I'll keep pulling it out as I see it.