Edit This

I skipped work kind work because it was supposed to rain all day. That was my excuse. Actually I just didn't feel like going to work today. The alleged rain made it easier.

When the rain did stop this morning I figured it was best to put the hole in the rain to good use. I have to get most of my editing done before the Lush cranks into high gear.

I have been over the slope below the roadside vegetable garden four times this year yanking my garden nemesis, the Clematis virginiana. Hate it. I did the same last year.

No more rain arrived and the sun actually came out. I kept editing.

And I kept on editing. I ended up spending almost six hours pulling clematis from the sunny utility meadow for the most part. That is how much of it there is. After four years of continuous eradication there is certainly a whole lot less, but it ain't gone yet.

Granted I was moving at a leisurely pace and may have been distracted a few times. I had already picked up the trash along a half mile stretch of the scenic byway before I even started editing. There was no hurry. I have the rest of my life to edit. I just want to get the clematis out now. I can save the easy weeds for my decrepitude.

There is another reason of course. Left undisturbed the clematis forms a thick smothering mat that inhibits most every thing else. Goldenrod is about the only thing that can penetrate it.

Goldenrod is fine enough, but I want more colors, more species and a longer bloom time than two weeks of yellow.

When I edit nature fills in behind me and I have been assisting by tossing copious quantities of wildflower seeds into the sunny utility meadow. I often gather seeds in my deadheading chores in the gardens I tend.

I want to see this, violets in the spring, not a mat of clematis.

There are a few chores involved in the making a botanical wonderland.