The Great Lawn

The current tumult that is the garden becoming, let's face it, the current tumult that is the entire wild cultivated gardens is overwhelming at this time of year.

My nemesis the Clematis virginiana is having a very good year. The entire gardens are infested with it. Maybe the ample rains have spurred it to massive growth this year. It may also have been laying low and stealthily taking over while I wasn't weeding. Either way, it climbs up and on top of everything else, cutting off the light and smothering every thing in its path. Were there is clematis, there isn't much else blooming.

Where the clematis isn't, where I have planted things and weeded on a more consistent basis, there is a diverse array of blooming weed flowers. That is what I am after. The clematis must go.

To my own detriment I have not been able to remain calm and garden on. I am obsessed with removing this scourge. I want a more civilized garden full of blooming weed flowers now. I have spent many evenings weeding until dark after dinner. The sad truth is it will take me years to be rid of this scourge. I can't have the garden I want right now.

The garden I want will have to expand out from the clematis free zone closest to the cozy cabin.

After dinner tonight I opted out of weeding clematis. Maybe that's a sign of progress. I do need to tend to the baby shrubberies and make sure they don't get completely encased in the Lush. I decided instead to whack the weeds around the shrubberies massed at the lower border. Then I kept on whacking

The Great Lawn got its second haircut for the season. I took this space last year from an eight foot tall tangle of elderberry, blackberry and New England Aster all knitted together with the strong cables of clematis. I was rewarded this spring with trilliums. Every garden needs negative space.

The baby shrubberies and grasses at the border have been brought out of hiding and into the garden. There are already a good number of shrubs planted all around the perimeter of the Great Lawn.

And when I was done whacking, I stood in the Great Lawn and looked up. The Lush surrounded me in all directions as far as the eye could see. For the first time in a while there was a feeling of calm in the garden. The frantic need to weed had slipped away, if just for a moment.

This could prove to be the key to me being able to remain calm and garden on, weed whacking. I had been waiting for my new Troy Bilt weed whacker that I won at May Dreams Gardens to arrive before mowing the paths again. I know for a fact that clear paths through the tumult gives a real sense of order to the garden. Mostly I do it before planned company arrives.

The calm of the Great Lawn tells me I need to do it for myself too. The weeds will get pulled. The wild flowers will fill in. I'll keep planting and adding more weed flowers. In time the Clematis virginiana will just be another weed.