Weeding

Weeding

There is a rockery near the front door. It is as old as the house, so more than 100 years old, and inevitably it grows a lot of weeds. It is around 17 feet by 10 feet at its widest points and two and a half feet high at its highest, though it is actually horseshoe shaped; there is a gravelled section within the curve of the horseshoe, which the weeds also seem to like.

There is one weed in particular which is the bane of my life - it is called 'herb robert' and is also known as wood avens. It has pretty yellow flowers, but don't be deceived by its innocent good looks. It is tenacious - holds onto he ground as if its life depended on it; plus, despite its pretty flower, it produces seeds like there is no tomorrow. It develops a ball shaped seed pod, then bursts open to throw thousands of seeds everywhere!

They do say that a weed is simply a flower in the wrong place - that is certainly true of a plant called alchemilla, or ladies' mantel. it is another plant that gets everywhere and is really hard to eradicate!

I must say I hate weeding – which is probably why I don’t do it very often. But that is counter-productive, because not weeding leads to tougher weeds, and of course more weeds and they are more attached to the ground than if I pulled them when they were small.

Anyway, today I decided to weed the rockery. It is the first time it has been done thoroughly this year, though OH did remove some of the larger weeds while I was away in April. It took three and a half hours! And there is a HUGE pile of weeds!