LysmachiaMoon's blog: Holy Cow!

The excitement never ends in rural southcentral Pennsylvania. Slurping my first cup of coffee, yawning, looking out the sliding glass doors to the deck. Suddenly all the cats are on Red Alert. My youngest girl cat, Samaria, comes running out of the back yard, ears flat, and ducks under the deck. Wha...? There's a huge black cow admiring my South Border, delicately sampling the leaves of the old apple tree.

By the time I was out of my jammies and into my workies, she was gone. I watched her trotting down the hill, out the driveway, make a left and down Barr Road. I jogged down the hill in the opposite direction, to let my neighbor know one of his prize Black Angus was on the loose, but he was already sprinting across his fields in her general direction. God speed, Jay. God speed and good luck....
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Since I was wide awake and dressed for it, I decided there was no point dilly dallying around. The northwest corner of the veg is a total mess and today was the day. I've got several of these problem spots all around the gardens, those places that are either very difficult in terms of soil, moisture, shade or whatever, or that simply for some reason get neglected. The northwest corner of the veg is the latter: it gets neglected, gets overgrown with whatever, and for some reason, never does anything productive. That changes now.

I've tried to use that corner in various ways. For a while it was my veg compost heap. Then it got overrun with (I think) morning glories (the tiny blue flowered trumpets that I always think of as "Calico Morning Glories" because they are so pretty and dainty). I got the bright idea next of planting pumpkins directly into the now well along compost heap and the vines did spectacularly welll...so well in fact that they overtook the whole west end of the garden and smothered everything in sight. Not one pumpkin, but plenty of vines. Thus endeth that lesson. The corner sat more or less empty for a while, then I thought to use it as a nursery for divisions, seedlings, etc. But at the same time, the native Rosa Virginiana just on the other side of the fence was really getting her feet under her and well, those spreading roots were the end of any struggling youngsters on the other side. Then I thought I'd try blueberry bushes in there....I planted three nice healthy bushes and watched them, over the course of 5 years, die. Not a single berry. For the past couple years, Rosa Viriginiana has had her way in there, sprouting happily among the corpses of the blueberries. Today I got it all dug out, dug over, amended, new edging installed, etc. It took hours. HOURS. I've decided nothing fancy no more, no how, no way. I'm put in metal edging to keep the rose roots out and that bed will be growing carrots and red beets next spring. The small "wasteland" strip along the north part of the veg (shaded by the apple tree, the garden shed, and well-watered by the rainbarrel) I'm thinking I might try growing celery, just a few plants.

The scary thing is this northwest corner is a lot smaller than the southwest corner of the veg, where I'm heading next....and it's overgrown with blackberries, couch grass, and daylilies. *shudder* Wish me luck.

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