I Keep Weeding

Though in some areas at a certain point you have to stop or you may crush the intended effect. I suppose this was the intended effect. It's what I got this year anyway.

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.

Experimenting With Annuals

Convolvulus tricolor. So far, pretty good.

The Last Stroll Of The Visit

In the wild cultivated gardens

On a warm evening in July

When Fairy Bells bloom

Now it is time to say aloha

Lucifer Without The Fog

The time machine will take you back to last year.

Up High In The Smokies

Clingman's Dome

Buttercups

Purple Fringed Orchid, Platanthera psycodes

A baby Fir, Abies fraseri, I am guessing.

Andrews Bald

Flowers For The Sisters

I consider the week of the 4th of July another peak bloom time in the wild cultivated gardens. After a whacked and early spring we seem to be back on schedule. Seems so anyway. I am also seeing signs of a possible early bloom in the late summer and early fall perennials of the tall flower meadow.

No matter, the sisters are here now and we are having plenty blooms for them to enjoy.

Gloriosa Daisy and Mexican Hats

Daylilies and Ox-Eye Daisy

Leeks in the roadside vegetable garden.

Pink Spirea

Daylilies and Stokesia

Liatris

Different kind Spirea

More daylilies.There are daylilies every where.

The lone blooming sunflower in the roadside vegetable garden. This year there are only two sunflowers in the vegetable garden. Very few showed up. They must have heard me cursing them.

The summertime show is here.

Gooseneck Loosestrife

I Keep Weeding

Eventually it is bound to make a difference.

I have been targeting the slope below the scenic byway in my weeding forays now and then. This is where I have planted a number of shrubberies to give the garden becoming more textural and winter interest and a modicum of privacy from the byway.

I have found three, possibly four species of ferns on this slope that are being left. Four if this red stemmed one which looks different from the others is a distinct species. Also being left are Jack in the Pulpits, native hydrangea and Meadow Rue. I have seeded Ramps and False Solomon's Seal. I want these shade lovers to be the filler between the shrubberies. All I have to do is get rid of the thugs.

The culvert that goes under the byway exits here. It was a waterfall in the last big rain. I have never seen that much water come through. I'll re-rock it. Then the bottom needs some redirection to make it flow left instead of right. Much like an alluvial fan, the left side has built up from sediment deposits and sent the flow off to the right.

When they aren't encased by the wild thugs, the baby shrubberies actually have a chance to do some growing. The Oakleaf Hydrangea and Fargesia Bamboo are starting to put on some size. I have also planted Doublefile Viburnum, Rhododendron and Calycanthus on this slope.

I can picture in my mind walking down a shaded path lined with interesting blooming shrubs in many textures, the ground softened by a carpet of native ferns and woodland perennials. I am weeding, seeding and planting my way there.

Out in the blazing sunshine, Daylily Hill is in full bloom. The daylilies might get weeded every other year or so. The Lush always creeps back in.

It looks more natural that way in this setting. You have to learn to love it - live with it. I don't have enough time to do manicured weeding in my own much too expansive gardens.

That is why it is important to have the weeds you want or at the least eliminate the thugs.

So the way things work around here, good weeds are added and bad weeds are edited out. The final results are often out of our hands.

These gardens are a joy when looked at up close at the multitude of individual plants and flowers or in the big picture looking over the large spaces filled with blooming things of all kinds. When you break it down into smaller bed size sections and start looking, there are always weeds that need pulling.

I'll keep weeding and for the sake of my sanity I concentrate mainly on half a dozen thugs and ignore the rest.