Believe me, I appreciate help when I need it. I have no false modesty about that. Also, I believe if someone wants to do something nice for another person, it is wrong not to let them have that chance. Though I haven’t been sick this summer, I haven’t felt up to the level of effort a pristine garden requires.
Of course, I also don’t believe in removing any organic material from a garden if possible. Return to the soil what you can, and it will more than return benefits to you down the road. That is, I try to return yard waste back to the soil. It’s an organic gardening strategy that encourages healthy, loamy soil that is full of nutrients, worms, and the micro-flora and fauna that is healthy soil. Traditional gardeners see that as messy gardening, so they rake out the good mulch and use chemicals to force their plants to poop out fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Ugh!
Though my herb garden this year wasn’t much, it gave me fresh herbs for my food. Maybe it wasn’t obvious, but weed-whacking through this plot would have been very aromatic because there was a border of chives and separate plantings of peppermint, basil, tarragon, and dill weed. My door was open. I could have been asked if there was anything I wanted to save. I guess in the world of yard nazismus, scorched earth is the policy.
Some of my mint survived because it was mixed in the bluebells, or, as I look at it, because bluebells were mixed in my mint!
About 6:15 this morning, there was a racket outside. My cats weren’t happy, of course, but they watched out the door anyway, then ran over to me to get a little loving and reassurance. Yep, yard nazis were at work! Not like the time my neighbor across the grass took it on herself to clean out my garden space, pulling out my mint and removing the organic material I wanted to decompose into the soil, though. This was serious weed-whacking!
Find the rhubarb in this picture. You can’t? Well, there are the stumps of two plants in the picture somewhere. Weed-whackery that just makes no sense to me. Rhubarb isn’t everyone’s favorite, but the plant is attractive enough most people recognize it as something the gardener planted there, something with a purpose.
Bless you, little dill weed! You survived because you were among the real weeds, those bluebells! What irony! Maybe there is a value to bluebells after all!
Hee! Hee! You are an elm sapling! You survived the herbal pogrom! Grow, little tree! Grow 80 feet tall!
I don’t own this place, I just rent it. I guess I don’t have much say in anything, and there isn’t much point to having anything but bluebells and iris, scentless roses and the thistle. The latter has taken over many of the flower beds in the complex, a gift from birds that eat thistle seed, perhaps, or the wind. Let the morning glories spread like the wind, speaking of which. Don’t bother with the weeding because the weed-whacking yard nazis will be through eventually. If you didn’t plant it, you won’t feel bad when they whack it to the ground! Whack! Whack! Whack!
I’m all about surviving retirement with two cats, eh? What happens outside I will try not to let bother me. Much. Remember, too, when someone wants to do something nice for you it is wrong not to let them have that chance. Yard nazis have mothers, too. In fact, I also know them to be really nice, thoughtful people. My not-so-obvious garden will all grow back.