My Battle Against the Weeds

 

For Nicole's Sunday in the Art Room I don't have "regular" art today, but I see my garden as an art room as well. It has dominantly native flowers, but also non-native poppies that I first sowed 14 years ago and they have come back reliably every year since then. What also comes back every spring is the weeds. Some of them I'm okay with, but others are really annoying and spread way too much. Like these ones:

Cleavers (Galium aparine), also known as "catchweed". It's a sticky, vining weed that clings to surfaces - like other plants. It was traditionally used as a medicinal plant, but medicinal or not, it has got out of control in my garden and I don't want it to climb into my natives and choke them. So I had to do something.

First I did the hard work of pulling the cleavers. Since we had some good spring rains in April, they were easy to pull, but gosh! there were so many. After I had cleared an area, I covered the ground with newspaper.

Then I covered the newspaper with a good layer of compost, hoping that this will suppress the weeds for a while.

Since this garden was created on top of an existing lawn after we had bought our home in 2012, by using cardboard and huge amounts of compost (if you're interested how to do that, you can read about it here), this now resembles a lasagna with all its layers of cardboard, compost, newspaper, compost. 

It's a rather healthy, fully organic garden. Even while concentrating on battling the weeds, I still noticed little critters like this orbweaver hanging out on the clary sage (Salvia sclarea).

It is a very big garden and I'm far from done. Unfortunately, I have to pause wielding newspaper and compost because with all the bending (there isn't enough space to kneel on a knee pad while weeding because of dense planting) I hurt my right leg. It crept up on me and I didn't pay much attention to it. But the pain became progressively worse until I wasn't able anymore to walk down stairs in a normal way without stabbing pain. So on Thursday morning I called my GP and got an appointment in the afternoon. He pressed on some parts along my knee and thigh up to my hips (ouch!) and diagnosed Iliotibial band syndrome. Great! Now I'm doing stretches, hoping this will help with the pain, and no more weeding for now (or only in places where there actually is enough space for a knee pad). Wish me luck, please.

Queen Anne and the Wild Carrot

"What is she up to now?" - well, I hope you're not thinking I have completely lost my marbles. Recently during an early morning walk in our Laguna I saw a lot of Queen Anne's lace in all stages of the plant. Fully bloomed, half way gone, seed pods - all are beautiful and fascinating. Definitely worthy to be captured with my phone camera on this foggy morning.

There were so many!

And then I found myself doubting whether these are indeed Queen Anne's lace. So I switched on my nifty Google Lens and was quickly informed that these plants are Wild Carrots.

"Oh boy", I thought, here I was mistaken all along with the name!

But actually I wasn't. This plant is botanically called Daucus carota with the common name wild carrot. However, there are also other names that it is known of - bird's nest, bishop's lace and - you guessed it - Queen Anne's lace. This name it only has in North America and it refers to both Anne, Queen of Great Britain, and Anne of Denmark (who was her great grandmother). It got the name because the flower resembles lace.

No matter which name you prefer (I love bird's nest), it is a beautiful flower that is very popular with bees and all kinds of bugs. It is a beneficial weed that can be a companion plant for some crops; however, some states (Iowa, Ohio, Michigan and Washington) have listed it as a noxious weed and it is considered a serious pest in pastures.

But in the Laguna it is simply beautiful and beneficial for the recovery of the land.