Maggie's Farm

It does too get weeds! Awhile ago it got some wasting disease that attacks pachysandra (thins it out--aggravated by my previous environmentally sound and lazy habit of leaving the fallen leaves to compost all winter between the plants. Then I "improved" the slope it is on with some Home Depot purchased compost and topsoil 5 years ago at the same time as I added it to the lawn in the other half of the front yard. Some thing like Queen Anne's lace (okay) and some other ugly green leaved weed have since sprouted up ever summer and shaded out the pachysandra. Not to mention the swamp maple seedlings that pop up every two feet (beneath their parent). Since I can't afford a crew of illegals to uproot the invaders, and can't get the seedlings out of the suburban hardpan, I clip miserably with the clippers. Yuk. If it weren't so shady, I would roll out the magic carpet of turf and be done with it. A prettier and hardier groundcover is that blue flowered thing. Haven't had my coffee yet, can't remember.

I know...my sympathies. Here in my New England slice of paradise, I have this recent invader (besides the illegals) http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/fact/ambr1.htm

In addition, there's the annual onslaught from the neighbor's 70 foot long clump of bamboo--twenty five foot roots growing up in my lawn, rose beds, vegetable garden. I have a husky 16 year old daughter helping me pull up, hack and generally repel it, but it takes several weekends every spring.

Then the wild roses growing in from the neighbors on all three sides. Scratch you thru leather gloves to trim back to the property line.

But who cares--one glimpse of my nectarine tree in full bloom now ($5 from Home Depot 6 years ago), or the hundreds of daffodils, or David Austin English Roses and all slave labor is forgotten. Who could live without a garden!?