I hate hate HATE HATE!!! chickweed

With its habit of propagating by runner, and of throwing out hideous long networks of roots wherever it touches, it’s positively nasty to dig out of a flower bed without disturbing everything else in the bed—which is a real problem when I’m trying to get it, and the wild oxalis, out without rooting up the oxblood lilies, which are just now coming on well after I planted them in the bed this spring.  In the end I managed it without much carnage among the lilies—I only rooted up a couple, and just pressed them back into the ground.

And then, and THEN!  I got so excited that I dug into another bed and rooted out more chickweed and oxalis, as well as a shitload of quackgrass, yellow foxtail, and lamb’s quarters.  Again, I managed to do only minor damage among the flowers, accidentally disturbing a couple of coreopsis that have already gone to seed and are probably dying back for the season anyhow.  I managed to dodge the irises and jonquils altogether.

The next thing to do, once the sun’s down, is to start pulling up the tomatoes and bell peppers and their cages, and piling them to go into the compost, and this weekend I really need to get out and spade over the part of the garden I let the grasses and weeds re-take, and empty the contents of the compost pen, by now well-rotted and ready to spread, over them.  That job won’t be much fun, because I have to get into the pen and shovel the compost with a coal scoop, over the top and into a wheelbarrow.  Maybe I can shanghai T into running the wheelbarrow-loads back and forth, so I don’t have to keep climbing into and out of the pen.  The pen absolutely has to be emptied right away, because very soon the pecans are going to start dropping leaves, and I’ll need the pen to start them rotting against next year.