This morning we were up and at 'em around 7am. Kev wanted to get going on cutting wood, and I wanted to do some weeding in my long-neglected herb garden. It is supposed to be another extremely hot & muggy day... too hot to work outside after, oh, about 10am.
We got the kids up, and Sammy is helping Kev while Joycie helped me. (Kev and Sammy are still out there working.)
Right next to my herb garden is my rock garden. Only it's so covered in ajuga, you can't really tell it's a rock garden. Also, years ago, a woman gave me a red clover that she said would bloom beautifully yellow and go real nice with the purple ajuga. I've been pulling out clover ever since.
The oregano, chives (3 varieties) and feverfew are prolific travelers. I'm pulling those out all over, too. One thing about working in the my herb garden... it smells so good when yanking all those runaway herbs out.
I also planted a wild black-eyed susan in one corner, and that sucker multiplied like crazy. I pulled it all out. I found 2 queen anne's lace plants growing, and I'm leaving those. They will expand their territory, too, so I plan to watch for babies and drastically cut short their life span.
My lady's bedstraw is going great guns. I've had that plant for years, and it never really amounted to much. This year, it's ten times the size it was last year, and it's choking out the lady's mantle and some lavender plants. I'm having mixed feelings about it, though... I really like lady's bedstraw. It's a beautiful shade of green, and it has lovely little yellow flower stems. It smells so good. It's also known as Our Lady's Bedstraw. Old lore is that Mary used it for Jesus' bed, which at that time, the plant flowered white, but after being used for Jesus' bed, it flowers golden. Magical lore is that lady's bedstraw will bring you love if you carry some of it with you, such as in a locket. Mostly it was used, in ye olden tymes, for mattress stuffing. When it's dried, it smells like sweet hay. I think I just talk myself into leaving it as is.
I have a split rail fence around my herb garden, and parts of it are starting to rot, so they're not something you'd like to lean against... A couple of years ago a large oak fell on part of it, taking some of the fence out. And last fall, we placed our outdoor wood stove unit out there, taking up a back corner. I was fine with this, because I don't mind having a smaller herb garden anyway... less to weed.
This morning, Joycie was making comments about how weedy it was and how overgrown and how neglected... I explained to her the point was just basically to keep it going until I retire, when I can spend more time in it. I do want to keep my herb garden, even though Kevin has suggested wiping it out and planting grass. I enjoy it, even though it doesn't look like a well-tended plot with specimen plants. I like sitting out there and smelling all the wonderful smells. Anyway, I like disorganization in my gardens. So there.
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