Saturday, May 19, 2007
Not in my back yard
I spent a few hours in the yard today, clearing out the Entry Space of Death in preparation of the installation of a new flower bed. Most of the tough work was clearing out the insipid blackberry bushes without totally trashing the yellow lantana (Wow. Great little Florida plant encyclopedia I found when looking for that link!) that re-emerged this spring. Don't get me wrong, I love fresh blackberries. They are sweet and juicy and just the right amount of sour to make my mouth water when I think about them. But have they ever shown up in your yard? And you were excited about that, yes? Maybe when you bought your property a year ago you even considered the existence of the blackberry bushes a selling point. Fresh blackberry cobbler every spring! Delicious! Then once you settled in a bit, started digging around in the yard to make room for some more pretty, native, flowering plants, an old dried up blackberry vine hiding away beneath your lantana bit you. Bit you hard. And you bit back, oh yes you did. After donning your heavy duty gardening gloves you ripped that prickling, invasive hunk of fauna right up from it's roots. Away with it! Away! And so went about your business. Until you ran into another blackberry vine. Then another. And then you started seeing the little bastard's baby runners popping up all over. So you went after them with the axe! Kill! Kill!
Ahem. So, yes. Ripped out some blackberry bushes today. Ahem.
And the strip of death is more like the strip-of-pretty-much-nothing-but-a-couple-of-Lantana now. Nice. Very nice. I'll add some plumbago someday soon and who knows what else.
I also planted ten one-gallon containers of perennial peanut in the very front yard along the dirt road. I didn't take the existing grass up because I want to see if the p. peanut will choke it out. If this test batch goes well, C&I will consider filling that entire front area with the stuff. If not, well, who knows. Without irrigation our grass just sucks. In the places that we even have grass. Cross your fingers for us that we can find a decent alternative ground covering for most of our lawn!
Ahem. So, yes. Ripped out some blackberry bushes today. Ahem.
And the strip of death is more like the strip-of-pretty-much-nothing-but-a-couple-of-Lantana now. Nice. Very nice. I'll add some plumbago someday soon and who knows what else.
I also planted ten one-gallon containers of perennial peanut in the very front yard along the dirt road. I didn't take the existing grass up because I want to see if the p. peanut will choke it out. If this test batch goes well, C&I will consider filling that entire front area with the stuff. If not, well, who knows. Without irrigation our grass just sucks. In the places that we even have grass. Cross your fingers for us that we can find a decent alternative ground covering for most of our lawn!
Labels: Gardening
idyllicchick, 6:10 PM
