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Keeping a Messy Garden
I have a friend who hacks her roses down to stumps every year. I just
cut off what looks diseased. I have blooms now and she doesn't even have buds. She spends hours scraping stuff out from under her shrubs, and cutting out parts of them that she "doesn't like the looks of.". I stuff leftover oak leaves and other yard garbage under all of them and never look back. They get lots of water and some food, and always look great. She calls an exterminator over any insects that show up in any numbers anywhere in her yard. I spray my roses with systemic insecticide, but leave everything else alone. If she sees a spider she kills it! I have those huge, bright green orb weavers and all manner of other spiders all over. I hardly remember to get the abandoned "cob webs" out of the corners of the windows and doors. She frets over cats, swears bumblebees are really carpenter bees, tells me the squirrells are ruining her garden, constantly rakes and bags any waste. I feed the cats, and love watching the squirrels and chipmunks. Every other year or so the big oaks at the back of the property drop millions of acorns, and I never pick them up. They rot right there unless the squirrels bury them, then they sprout. I mow the forest twice and that is the end of them most years. But the squirrels have a Fabulous Buffet, and never touch my roses! When the leaves fall, I shove them under shrubs, use them as mulch, anything but taking the time to rake and bag. If all the beds are overflowing, there is an area under the trees where I blow the leaves with the blower. Thrushes are always back there flipping up leaves as they do, looking for bugs. Voles and moles have built cities under there, but I plant my "must haves" in holes lined with scratchy rock, and they eat the roots of the unprotected weeds, not my precious plants. Yesterday I saw a BIG rabbit in the back, eating the abundant weeds in the patch of green that might pass for a lawn--from an airplane! The rabbits have never bothered my roses, gardenias, etc. A former owner planted liriope as a border EVERYWHERE, and I know I should have dug and divided it. But it is unstoppable! The rabbits do eat it, but who could tell? Because of the vole population, we have our very own Neighborhood redtailed hawk who patrols the area and perches in tall trees staring down at the messy yards. There are lots of sloppy gardeners in my neighborhood. Not much is neat, but everything is lush. Flora and fauna. The choice usually goes like this: there is just enough time to water deeply OR pull up weeds and bag them--or there is just enough time to rake and bag leaves OR spray or feed my roses--or "god those weeds look terrible but I just have time to cut some flowers for the table." It is hard to see why I should change my ways. For once, the lazy person is rewarded! |
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