On the slope below the scenic byway it is a different matter. Another marathon weeding session occurred there today. What has been planted are baby shrubberies. There are no froufrou flowers to worry about crushing. The baby shrubberies need sunlight and elbow room to grow big and strong. I gave them plenty more today.
I have been watching this native Flattened Oat Grass, Danthonia compressa, to see how I like it through the seasons. Is it friend, a potential candidate for the wild meadows department or a foe to be banished? It is totally cute in the spring when it is a round green tuffet. As it grows and flattens, the look gets more coarse. The mature height of two feet keeps it on the short end of things. Flowers could rise above it easily. This grass is native to the high balds of the Smoky mountains and is at the southern end of its range here. For now it is a keeper. Good thing since it is every where.
Convolvulus tricolor up close. Yes the flower is in focus. I grew a full tray of these from seeds and planted them all in the bed by the shores of Turd Blossom Lake. This little experiment with annuals is showing me how I can best grow things from seed with my short season and lack of facilities. It can be done, particularly when you plant them out in a prepped and mulched bed and don't have to fight the weeds.
I suppose this is the intended effect. I weeded this section along the driveway three times at least in the early spring before things got going. Mostly I removed the fescue grass and another coarse grass with nasty irritating hairs that I have not been able to ID. Both of them were too large and aggressive for the wildflowers to successfully compete.
I'll keep weeding. It's what I do.
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10 comments:
Shrubberies. hahaha " Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history."
Weeding is what we do. :-)
Janet that is why many of my shrubberies come as baby, small rooted stem cuttings from the gardens of the less economically stressed. There is something to be said for all those people who just threw the mulch on the shrubberies in these gardens before I arrived.
Beautiful. Keep weeding. Your shrubberies will look fine soon as they will have room to grow.
One of these days you will walk out and realize that those babies have grown up. They will be thanking you for doing all of that weeding. You will be quite pleased with yourself then too.
I agree about the shrubberies; half the fun is waiting for them to grow up! I also like the oat grass with the daylily; they seem to go together.
bev
Ok, it was a really lame attempt to quote Monty Python... here is a better shrubberies quote--
HEAD KNIGHT: Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must place it here beside this shrubbery, only slightly higher so you get a two-level effect with a little path running down the middle.
Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must cut down the mightiest tree in the forest... with... a herring!
"you must cut down the mightiest tree in the forest... with... a herring!"
A bit like my efforts to weed in the wilderness. All for the baby shrubberies.
:-) yes, with a herring.
Oh, here's where you explain that annuals take some finesse in your growing season.
Will blueberries grow up there? They grew tall in Georgia. I know you don't live in Georgia. Anyway, blueberries are awesome because they flower first thing in spring and ripen quickly and give you fall color. An excellent shrubbery, imo. They have that pesky acid soil requirement tho' and maybe you don't want to attract any more berry-eating varmints than you may already have.
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