I've spent ninety minutes gardening every day for the past week, yet I've barely scratched the surface. As I've crouched over one small patch after another, I've pondered the question of why there's so much to do this year—as opposed to last year, when I hardly set foot in the front rock garden.
The difference is that last spring I was too busy to take on the garden. Then, by the time the first flush of spring had passed, the weather turned stinky-hot and I refused to go out into the heat to garden.
Talk about paying for one's sins! Last year's negligence has tripled this year's work. Lying awake the other night, rather than counting sheep I began to count the number of invasive species I have acquired over the years, inadvertently or through deliberate foolishness.
1) Garlic chives, once they are in flower, pop their little black seeds over a wide area, and the following year you find garlic chives growing vigorously in the midst of every grouping in the garden. Fail to eradicate them and the following year the problem multiplies exponentially.
2) Tradescantia's seeds do the same thing after hanging for a week in those little post-flowering seed pouches. It took me many years to realize that just because the tradescantia plants are flourishing doesn't mean that I have to leave them in the ground. That's why God made trowels! Now I dig them out as soon as I see them insinuating their long green leaves in unwanted places. Last year, of course, they got a reprieve, so this year I'm finding incipient stands of tradescantia every few feet.
3) In the flat part of the garden in front of the house, I planted (on the advice of a landscape architect), a spurge with a pale green variegated leaf. Its yellow flowers pop up on an eight-inch stem to stand above the leaves. Very pretty in late spring. But its ivy-like stems travel out to the wide world, and each terminus of a stem sets a tough root that hangs on for dear life when I try to pull it up. I've nearly finished yanking out that guy and his cousins by the dozens as they attempt to take over the world.
4) I admit that I actually bought a lily-of-the-valley plant years ago. It's my own fault. Much as I love the fragrance—muguet, in French—I am too lazy to pick more than a small handful to decorate the dining room table for two days. For the most part, I walk by the stand of lilies of the valley and see them testing the boundaries of their territory. Like all the rest of my invasive friends, they're doing their best to claim the entire garden as their rightful dwelling place.
5) But the violets are NOT my fault. I swear I never bought even that first plant. It came from nowhere—like a monster alien in the movies—and it is winning the battle for garden space. And if I fail to do more than a token cutting of the lily-of-the-valley flowers, you can imagine how loath I am to create those pretty, French-style violet nosegays that poor women used to sell outside the theaters, offering violets to rich men for their attendant ladies. I don't pick many violets. But as soon as I finish with some of the other aggressive plants, I'm going to uproot every violet plant I can find. Ruthlessly. Enough with the violets. May this year be the last. (But I'll probably leave a token plant or two out of pity, and then the whole business will start all over again.)
6) The Greek oregano is almost under control. Its growth is as vigourous as its flavour is overpowering. So I'm hedging the truth; it is NOT under control in the slightest.
7) The mint comes up wherever it wants. Oh, I know. You should plant it in a pot that you sink into the ground. Well, the pot broke during some long-ago winter. Now the mint has its way with us. My husband, luckily, likes mint tea in the summer, so I taught him how to identify it (try smelling) and he now is a one-man mint-control machine and feels rich with his endless supply. Nonetheless, eternal vigilance is the price of freedom from excessive mint.
8) Visiting friends in Campbellford ten or so years ago, I bought a sweet little bright-green ground cover at the town market. It was called something like "butter & eggs." Its round, nickel-sized, shiny leaves are accompanied in mid-summer by pretty dandelion-yellow flowers. It looks as if butter wouldn't melt in its mouth, but I promise you that it is my second most invasive plant. Its long shoots reach out from the mother plant and, before I know it, it is in seven other locations, from each of which it sends out additional colonizing shoots. The plant I bought sat sedately in its spot for three years, never budging, never causing a problem. But once it reached critical mass, its aggression began. It wiped out other ground covers before I realized they were under attack. This is its last year as a free plant. I will cut a circle around the mother plant with my scissors—a generous circle, I promise you—and then I will rip out with my bare hands any sweet-looking, round-leafed, yellow-flowered, vicious punk that dares to appear outside the circle.
9) Which brings me to vinca minor. A sturdy, attractive ground cover, its stems travel two, three, four feet in all directions, looking for an inch of ground to call its own. Another inch. And then it's on to the proverbial mile. It tramples over anything in its path. I've thought occasionally of abandoning the garden to these two—the vinca and the butter-and-eggs—and letting them battle to the death. The vinca has an interesting self-preservation strategy. It flowers in May (periwinkle blue, of course), with blossoms so cheery and welcome that you say to yourself: There's no way I can pull these flowers out of my garden. I'll just wait until it has stopped blooming. And by that time, the vinca has taken over another four square feet.
This will be the year when I establish firm boundaries for each of my nine (count 'em: NINE) invasive little friends.
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