Weed patrol: Curly dock

Like so many other perennial weeds, curly dock first reveals itself as a rosette, then rises up as a towering, magnificent bastard. Check out this one, already taller than my rain barrel. Supposedly it’s edible, but I never find them before they’ve already turned bitter. Slugs are more likely to eat it.

Weed patrol: Black Swallow-wort again

These are weeds. Evil, evil weeds. Black-hearted Black Swallow-wort. Working their way up to becoming the army again of last year.

Weed patrol: Trees?

For all the griping I do about the evil swallowort, right now all the maple shoots seem almost as bad. Those things pop up everywhere, every year. No matter how many you pull, the next thing you know, the shoots you missed are turning into seedlings, the seedlings you missed are turning into saplings, and […]

Weed patrol: Mullein

This is a rosette of Common Mullein, just before I dug it up.

Weed patrol: Bittersweet nightshade

Spring is entering the “Holy Crap look how fast everything is coming up” phase. As in, all of a sudden, there’s a huge vining tangle of Bittersweet nightshade up on the hill. Well, it’s a much smaller clump now, and I’ll be back to pull up more.

Not so great celandine

The next on the weed hit list is Greater Celandine. It forms nice clumps with interesting foliage and bright yellow flowers in early summer, but it wants to do so everywhere. Even if bees visit it (which if it happens at all must be when I’m not looking), there are other flowers for them. So […]

Weeding the maple sprouts

With the first flowers come the first weeds. Maple seedlings are sprouting up all over the place. So I went on maple patrol and pulled them up. And I’m off to go help open NERAX on time.

The evil weed covers tart fruit

So I’m hacking away at the Evil Weed up on the hill and I’m thinking, Hey, this is where I found those apple blossoms last May. Are they apples yet? So I pulled more swallowort off the tree and find one, three, four…

Time to weed the ragweed

Don’t let this happen to you! A few plants with attractive foliage, a bit like tansy or chrysanthemum, in a little-visited corner turned into a Giant Pile of Ragweed. I should have known better.

Still not milkweed — Evening primrose

When these leafy rosettes showed up last May, I knew they looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure why. They came up where I had planted butterfly weed seeds, so could that be it? Or maybe even milkweed? Then I remembered they look familiar because I get them every year and always forget what they are. […]