Wednesday, June 24, 2015

The Ant under the Leaf


His world can turn upside
down so easily.  It happened
again yesterday when a 
human hand lifted the mat
of dried ash and crocus leaves
covering his home, clearing
the small area for a young
penstemon plant.



Swarming, they were
allowed to relocate
with their newborn under
the leaf debris a little further
away, as no mist drifted down
from the heavens freezing them
into withering curled up corpses.
He was lucky.


Of course, he doesn't perceive
it that way.  He was exposed
and defied the odds of death
over life one more day.
Night comes and passes, and
the empty patch of ground lays bare, 
as he hides seven ash leaves over
in his new home.



















The sun moves low in the afternoon sky,
then hands dig a hole where he had
lived the day before, and fill it
with life of a different sort.  
Magical rain falls only upon the plant,
then all is quiet.  Tomorrow in the 
noon day sun, after the dew drops have
vaporized, he will investigate.












Penstemon



Dancing to a different song

Gone with the old - in with the new







Gardens Re-Invented















Heaven on Earth




Time
to 
feed
the
cats.


Bye!



Monday, June 8, 2015

BLAST ZONE



into
my
world
of
mastering
the 
garden






Bearded iris...what's not to love about them?  I do nothing except cut down the flower stalks when blooming has finished.  Yard is on maximum biodiversity mode which prevents thrips becoming a problem, and the tubers lay across the top of the ground as the babies spread across the arid landscape ruling out rot as an issue.

I never cut down leaves or clean up dead leaves like all the instructions command one to do for a perfect bearded iris environment, and they multiply and multiply and multiply everything else right out of existence by creating a tight web of tubers covering all exposed ground fairly solidly.  If ignored, they become detrimental to the yards diversity.

It appears I ignored them maybe just one measly year too long :(

Pick ax, shovel, and my handy dandy extra-large screw driver weed extractor in hand, I melted away in above 90 degree humidity to fill up six bags with weedy trash and chopped up bearded iris parts.  Saved nine baby plants to start all over again, thought about it for a few seconds, and then popped them into the trash bag also.  I've zoned out on bearded iris this year.  A small patch still exists skirting the blueberry bed, but I can just yank them out of that healthy soil super easy, and yank I did to shrink the colony to one-third its previous size.

Their covering capability was exploited to the max in the back yard corner garden bed to hopefully prevent further migration of those fragrant weedy greens from the neighbor's quarter acre that looked so sweet the first year and morphed into a pop-up everywhere nightmare the second year forever more.

Bearded iris, Round-Up and Weed-B-Gone keep me happy with my neighbor's fence line that has become a no-mow zone thanks to their relentless appetite for junk, junk, and more junk piled along that area. They haven't owned a working lawn mower for years.  It's just weed whacker mama out there once in a blue moon, and nowhere-in-sight daddy nowhere in sight.






after
I
rest
up
a
bit






...not for the faint of heart, and my heart appears to be sliding to the fainting side at 150 MPH this summer.  Hard to get rid of, I'm told...very, very hard to get rid of.  Husband digs new ones out every year and they laugh in his face popping back up in two weeks flat.  I'm calculating how much destruction will totally wipe them out while leaving the healthy environment still in tack.
















Pardon me
while I consult
with
 my fellow
Master Gardeners
on 
this 
problem









Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...