By the time you get to the end of this diatribe you will find the moral is: 1. I can't fix everything, but I can fix some things. 2. We can work to make some dreams come true.
Crabgrass. Really. This began several years ago when the crabgrass crept through the fence from the yard to the east. At first it was content to stay in the planter, but it has slowly moved into the fescue on the east. A wall went up between the two yards, but the crabgrass remained.
Every year K or I would pull out crabgrass, spray it, or rake it unto some form of submission. The planter with crabgrass is also home to daffodils and jonquils in their season. At one time I had 12 irises there, but the irises lost the battle to the weeds. One huge clump of yellow iris remains, and a tiny rhizome* is making a comeback. I'll have to wait and see what color it is.
Last November I launched an all-out attack on the dreaded weed. Since the narcissus were beginning to come up, I couldn't start with Round-up and kill everything, so I used a weed spray that said it was particularly effective on crabgrass. I used it again the next month. The weeds began to die out from the weedkiller and because it was winter. So I did my first round off pulling weeds out. The planter looked better. I sprayed some isolated areas with Round-up in January and pulled out more dead weeds.
I'm writing of a planter that is 5 feet deep going back to the wall and about 10 feet long. After three months of work, the back 18 inches didn't have anything growing in the dirt, just dried remnants of old crabgrass. Areas of green weeds just remained next to clumps of daffodils and iris because they had been getting food and water there. On February 2nd, I began the first round of pre-emergent crabgrass killer on the planter and the grass. The second round was 6 weeks later, just like the directions say.
So far this has been successful! Last week on my spring break I pulled out the traces of antique weeds from the planter and replaced them with 35 gladiolus corms (bulbs to you). I also added two clumps of pale blue iris. I know iris are blooming now, and are not being planted in California at this time. However, Home Depot was still selling them, and I felt like giving it a try. (We have had lots of rain this year. It rained last night and it should rain one week later.) One of the rhizomes* was large, and I think it will live until next spring and bloom then.
The moral of this is: When I can't fix everything, I can fix some things. The day I put the winter fertilizer with the pre-emergent crabgrass killer on my lawn, I was extremely discouraged about my job. Our school has been in Program Improvement for four years, and the pressure to raise test scores is very strong. Every emphasis is to help students do better on the state tests. And the students don't care nearly as much as the teachers. That really bites. I'll have 8 students in one class who don't want to strain their brains. They want to make the teacher tell them all the answers.
Therefore, it helps to come home and takes steps that I know will work to improve my yard. That's one reason I love to garden; I always see results. I can make some things happen.
Also, one year ago I wrote in this blog about dreaming that my backyard was a bower of flowers. It was a night when I thought God was mocking me by showing me all the things I had not accomplished. When I told Richard about the dream he said we could make my dreams come true. So we have spent a year planting and refining the backyard. It should be very nice for our anniversary party to which you are invited next June 19th.
* rhizome: the root that irises grow from. I think it's technically an underground stem.
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