In the garden clean-up - what fun!!

Well, the pups and I started out, me pulling and cutting down vines that were wrapped around the deck railing and all through the garden on the side of the deck...gracious was it overgrown! Of course Wilbur wanted in on the action too and was weaving himself in and out of the vines. The flower bed when all the vines were yanked out, the mint thinned out and the butterfly weed seeds dispersed throughout in hopes that it will spread, looked, as my friend Denise would say, a bit ratty-tatty. Well hopefully we will get a shower soon or I may even turn the sprinklers on to help out. I did find some wild strawberries in there, the creeping jenny that looked so pretty down at the Riverwalk that took forever to find, some ferns transplanted from the back, leggy stems from the windflower that have long since bloomed. The violets are propagating very well and I've even 3 crepe myrtle trees that were 'give mes'...you know, the ones that seed themselves (maybe the birds helped with that one). I do know for sure that the squirrels have planted my backyard full of oaks, hickory and those hateful sticker ball trees too which I spend forever trying to rip out by the roots before they get too big.

I dug up the cactus (sorry mom) that my mother had given me (I do believe I gave her the original starter piece) and planted it in one of the deck boxes instead. I have let the flower bed it was in overgrow so badly since the cactus was in there...remember that cactus your mom had on the kitchen table or in the window sill that looked sooo fuzzy and cute and you just knew she couldn't be telling the truth when mom said it would 'bite you', well let me tell you...this big cactus that has the gorgeous yellow flowers in spring, is the granddaddy to that hateful thing your momma had in the kitchen. I wouldn't touch it and used the shovel to transport and plant the thing in the box...and yes I jumped out of the way when it looked like it would fall in my direction...I'm not stupid ya know!!!

It was finally a decent day to be out in the yard...a little sun, not too much heat and a slight breeze...the makings of a fine work day outside in Georgia. It's hard when I think of yard clean-up and weed destruction, I can't help but remember growing up in Cape St. Claire in Maryland. The house we lived in started out as a summer party bungalow and was updated and winterized when my mom and dad bought it. The place was in a waterfront beach community and the yards were full of sand and seashells and bitty rocks and pebbles. It was quite delightful but my mom wanted grass...daddy was content with green stuff so...I grew up appreciating anything that was in the yard and green...so what if our yard 'bloomed' every summer..I was quite fascinated with the pretty little blue flowers, lavender ones, white ones and I think my all time favorite were the ones that made my chin turn yellow and said that I liked butter...what fun memories of childhood.

ON the other hand, I now live in a much more civilized community with paved streets and sidewalks, street lights that come on at dusk and much smaller yards and all the houses have numbers on the mailboxes and houses and even the curbs out front...my neighbors probably think the Beverly Hillbillys moved in next door (did I mention that my ancestors were Virginia Hillbillys??) and much to their probable dismay I still don't have the heart to kill the pretty flowering grass...

Well, onto the garden clean-up...Keep in mind that I am originally from up north in Maryland...I was not familiar with the wild and wide assortment of bugs, critters, and foliage that grows down here in the south. We moved here in 1999 and it took me until last summer (yes 5 whole years) to realize that that intrusive yet pretty little vine that kept trying to overtake my backyard flower garden, draping itself ever so tightly around the jasmine and porch window boxes, not to mention the deck railings and even up the siding and around the windows , was kudzu...yeah, go ahead and laugh I did...okay remember the grass story, kudzu has pretty little white and lavendar flowers that resemble morning glories...and the vines start out as such pretty little heart shaped leaves...who'd have thought it was that great big honkin vine that drapes the highways and interstates covering all the trees, shrubs and plant life and effectively strangling it all to death...it has such cute little flowers!! Well all that being said, I think I will go out tomorrow with that big bottle of round-up and take care of the weeds in the yard!