Just as an un-assorted assemblage of mere words, though they may be the best words in our language, will express no thought, or as the purest colours on an artist’s palette–so long as they remain on the palette–do not form a picture, so our garden plants, placed without due consideration or definite intention, cannot show what they can best do for us.
~Gertrude Jekyll, “A Definite Purpose in Gardening” (1905)
3 July 2019. At the Coe garden in the morning. Rita [a Coe student who worked as my garden assistant at Coe during the summer and helped with my vegetable garden at Wickiup] and I focused on pulling sedge out of the NE quadrant of the lawn. By 11:00 a.m. the area was reasonably clean: still a few individuals sprinkled around but the yellowish-green patches of sedge that had been so noticeable when we began are gone. Now we’re ready to tackle the SE section.
The other major job for the morning was cleaning up the “M,” “L,” and “C” beds in front of the patio. Rita was tasked with cutting back the New England asters in “M,” including one stalk already in bloom, two months before we want them blooming. Meanwhile I focused on cutting back the penstemon, spiderwort, and daisies. I also pulled up several solitary asters in the “C” bed. The daylilies will soon be in full bloom, and I’d like to eliminate detractions from their display.
This afternoon Rita and I went to Wickiup. The temperature was in the mid 80s so not incredibly hot, but the humidity was intense and there was almost no breeze. I found the heat oppressive, and I was taking breaks every 15 minutes–and sweating even when sitting in the shade. Rita was weeding and got sick shortly after drinking from her water bottle. We had driven separately, and once she felt better she drove back to campus. I would have quit early, but a rain cell passed south of us. A quick drop in temperature and a steady breeze made the working conditions much more comfortable. I fertilized a row of eight tomatoes and then covered the north side of their livestock panel support with a layer of newspapers and mulch. Earlier I had weeded the bed with the eggplants and added a fertilizer/compost mix around each plant. I finished the afternoon by harvesting a gallon of snap peas, including some snow peas that had moved beyond the “harvest me as a snow pea” phase.
Despite having been gone in June on the three-week trip to Scotland, the garden overall looks reasonably good, but there are still areas over-run by weeds. All of the long west-side bed is inundated with unwanted invaders. The two grape beds need serious weeding, and I have not yet finished constructing the wire supports for all the vines. The asparagus bed is full of weeds, as is the row of okra and tomatillos. The pathway around the watermelon bed has not yet been weeded, and I need to weed the SE corner of the garden so I can finish construction of the new wooden raised bed. The whole east daffodil bed is rife with quack grass, which will be a nightmare to remove. I hate seeing these areas of the garden so unkempt, making it impossible to follow through on planting projects–such as sowing zinnias in the daffodil bed. In my list of weedy areas I forgot to mention the small blueberry bed. I’ve cleared that of weeds twice this year and now the small bushes are buried again in foxtail and a tall weed for which I have no name. The invaders’ pressure is unrelenting. Ah, the joys of gardening.