Weeding my own garden

Peaches, nasturtium, and larkspur are beginning to bloom, but so are spring weeds. They seem to sprout up full grown overnight, and I don't know where they are finding the moisture to grow like this because the soil was pretty dry. (Better check the drip lines before the really hot weather sets in) It's not possible to get rid of this particular spring rite of passage, because the seeds blow in from all over the neighborhood, but I try to get rid of them before they flower and dump the bulk of their seeds where they stand.

As I sometimes do, I started thinking while I was weeding. One of my pet peeves is the tendency of some people to point out the failings of others.  I find it particularly egregious when religious people feel it is their duty to warn others they are sinning in some particular way, usually a sin that they themselves aren't tempted to commit. I can speak only from my own faith perspective and study of the Bible, but from what I understand from the teachings of Jesus, I've got enough to do weeding my own garden. I think that if one reads the Bible and finds things to apply to other people, he or she is reading it the wrong way.

Matthew 7 quotes Jesus as saying, "Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye". That seems pretty clear to me.

 I'll never get all the weeds out of my garden, or out of my life, so I'd better concentrate on weeding my own garden and making it into something beautiful. If someone admires my garden and wants to know how I did it, I'll be glad to tell them.

More weeding and a strawberry update

I weeded the second half of this combined bed today. In addition to Bermuda grass, it contains several other troublesomely invasive weeds including mint and nutsedge. I made the mistake of planting mint last summer (you can read about that here, and also see how the bed looked last fall), but I have no idea how the nutsedge managed to sneak in. All three plants reproduce quite prolifically by stolons and runners, and don't even need to resort to the bother of producing flowers and seeds, although the sedge and mint can do that as well. The underground stolons are designed to break off easily when disturbed, which means that when I try to pull them out, some little piece is inevitably left behind. Each little piece will  then regenerate Hydra-like into many more obnoxious plants.

This bed contains small fig and almond trees and strawberry, artichoke, rosemary, Japanese eggplant, and pepper plants. The hollyhocks just appear as if by magic everywhere in the yard, and I leave them alone if they aren't crowding out something else. I think they may have actually helped the strawberry plants by shading them a little. It will be interesting to see if the strawberry plants survive the summer as most gardeners treat them as annuals here and replant each fall. We're still getting a few strawberries each day, most of which do not make it into the house. I ate the three I picked today while I was doing battle with the Bermuda grass.

Boring but necessary tasks

Today's gardening efforts were primarily devoted to getting weeds out of the raised bed containing rose bushes and pruning the thevetia hedge which separates the pool area of the yard from the garden area. Not very exciting, but necessary. It's not really the right time to prune, but the hedge had gotten so tall that it was blocking light and growth from the lime and tangerine trees we planted a few years ago. The tangerine tree is about four feet high, the lime tree about six feet high, and the thevetias were about 10 feet high.

Surprised by apricots

I just noticed that there are several dozen marble-sized apricots on two different trees. I hadn't seen them before...maybe I was too busy thinning peaches and pulling weeds to see them. I wonder how many times in life we miss seeing beautiful things because we are too busy with necessary tasks?

Messy things

I was excited to receive an email yesterday from the chair of this year's Real Gardens for Real People tour informing me that she was forwarding information about our "Arizona Backyard Eden" to the people who are planning the 2013 tour. Because the 2011 tour was in the west valley area, it's not likely that another tour will be scheduled in this part of the valley, but her email was very affirming and complimentary. It did get me to thinking "what if", though. What if our garden is selected for a future RGRP tour? Although productive and pleasurable, it's rather messy compared to the ones we visited on last year's tour.

There's a large pile of vegetable debris under the lemon tree, evidence of our current experimentation with open-air composting. We have two purchased compost bins, a traditional squarish one and a cylindrical tumbler contraption. Neither have worked very well for us, most likely because I haven't been diligent about keeping the material in them sufficiently moist. So this time when I cleaned out the broccoli and cauliflower leaves after last harvest, I just dumped them on the ground under the lemon tree. It's too shady to successfully grow much under there anyway. I also dump coffee grounds, banana peels, and other kitchen scraps directly into the raised beds outside the kitchen. Not very attractive, but the vegetables and flowers growing in them seem to like these additions. I also don't rake up fallen leaves from around the citrus trees in the gravel yard; they too compost in place and add needed organic material to the heavy clay soil.

Then there are the dandelion-type weeds, which seem to explode on some kind of exponential curve this time of year. I don't "dig up" the beds very often- an idea I took from a Phoenix Permaculture Guild class- and I prefer to minimize the use of chemicals, so that means lots of hand pulling of weeds, which takes lots of time I don't always have. Our largest pond is currently overwhelmed by cattails that are crowding out the water lilies. (Cattails are #3 on my list of "things I wish I hadn't planted", along with Mexican primrose and Mexican petunia.) Of course, the fish don't seem to mind living in an underwater jungle, and the hummingbirds can use the cattail fluff as nesting material. The sandstone pieces lining our lower pond are crumbling in places because I step on them while dipping water out to water potted plants...but the plants love the nitrogen-rich pond water.

Yes, our yard is messy, all right. Hopefully I'm not justifying my own laziness, but I see meaning in its messiness. When I think about it, life can be pretty messy too. We can spend our time raking gravel and spraying weeds into submission, and end up with a barren moonscape of a yard...or a life. I think I'd rather tolerate....and maybe even learn to appreciate.....a little messiness.

No picture this time, though! Not comfortable enough with my messes for that!

Of springtime and ashes

"What a wondrous time in spring, when all the trees are budding. The birds begin to sing; the flowers start their blooming. That's how it is with God's love, once you've experienced it. You want to sing; it's fresh like spring; you want to pass it on."

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, which I never have fully understood, perhaps because of my non-liturgical upbringing. Our pastor says Lent is her favorite season...I can't say that I feel the same way. Lent is sackcloth and ashes and repenting our sinful nature, which may be necessary, but is not enjoyable, and (I hope I don't get struck by lightning) seems somewhat masochistic to me. Maybe it works better in more temperate climates, where February is still winter, rather than in Phoenix, where it marks the beginning of spring.

Our earliest-bearing peach tree is setting fruit; a later bearing variety is covered in blossoms; and the apricot and almond trees are also beginning to blossom. I've already picked a nice batch of sugar snap peas and a few asparagus shoots (only because I only planted two plants....must remedy that!) and our second planting of lettuce is reaching harvest-size leaves. Pear, plum, fig, and apple have not yet blossomed, but have full buds I expect to see open any day now. Some of the nasturtiums are blooming (maybe I should pick a few and add to the lettuce for a salad tonight); lilac vines are blooming, and the air is becoming heady with the fragrance of citrus. Calla lilies, which I'd wondered if had survived, are emerging from the ground...larkspur and hollyhock are coming up everywhere, in unexpected locations. Even in the gravel part of the yard I'm seeing marigolds, hollyhocks, nasturtiums...to quote my favorite Jurassic Park quote, "life will find a way."

And, there are a few weeds that need to be pulled. There are always a few weeds to be pulled, and it's generally best to pull them early before they have a chance to grow to giant size and set seed. I can see that part of Lent. There are weeds to be pulled in our lives, and with weeds, it's generally best to pull them when they are small and manageable. But in my garden, and I think also in our lives, it's an ongoing process. And I don't want to concentrate so much on the weeds that I can't enjoy the flowers.

Weeds and things

Today's Master Gardener class was on weeds, which was actually quite interesting. For example, I learned that many of our most pervasive and obnoxious weeds are of European origin, and that we can blame the fall of Constantinople in 1453 for their arrival here. Seriously. When the Ottoman Empire captured Constantinople and controlled the Black Sea, it became very expensive for Europeans to trade with India, China, and other Asian countries. Enter Christopher Columbus and his search for a western route to the Orient. The wooden ships of the time needed ballast to provide stabilization on the ocean, and if they offloaded cargo on one side of the Atlantic, they needed something to replace its weight. The cheapest and easiest thing to do was to fill barrels with local dirt....and the weed seeds, fungi, bacteria, and other inhabitants of the soil came along for the ride.

I also now can identify and call some weeds by their proper names before attempting to kill them. The tall ones with leaves that look sort of like giant dandelions? Prickly lettuce, also called compass plant because the leaves grow north and south. The low-growing stuff with many small leaves that exudes a sticky sap (which is poisonous, by the way, and could cause eye damage if you rub your eye while weeding) Spurge. The feathery ones that like to hide and grow in shrub plantings, and that have a tap root that goes down to China? Desert broom, which unlike most things that are growing unwanted in my backyard, is actually a native plant.

I'm certain I will have plenty of practice naming weeds in the next few days. We got quite a bit of rain the last few days. Monsoon rains in the desert are always needed and provide a bit of cooling respite from the 100-plus normal temperatures for this time of the year. But, in addition to making our flowers, vegetables, and trees happy, they also cause weed seeds that were hiding dormant in our yard to sprout and proliferate.