Gardening is a rewards-driven activity. When the plants flourish and the flowers are bright and beautiful, I feel flushed with success and think gardening is the greatest activity one could undertake. I have even gone so far, when the garden is looking extremely well, as to consider joining the gardening committee to pass along my expertise.
Ha ha! Then reality returns. After sweating my brow off, half of the flowers die, and I am ready to kill off the other half and replace the whole lot with plastic flowers. With some gnomes and flamingos thrown in. No doubt this would be frowned upon by the gardening committee, who never kill half of their flowers.
And then there are the weeds to contend with. A brick walkway runs the length of the front of our rowhomes, and weeds are quite happy to live in all the little cracks. I was advised to put vinegar on them and they should -- and here I quote a venerable garden committee member -- "just dry up and blow away."
I had my doubts, but the source seemed confident, and if her front walk was any testimony to the power of vinegar I was ready to try it. Besides, it would save me a lot of work if it was successful.
And so I sprayed vinegar on the weeds. Without meaning to, I also sprayed the bricks, the street, the telephone pole, the steps, the trash cans, the cellar door, the neighbor's cat...okay, not the cat. But the point is that using a sprayer is not an exact science. Whatever's in the sprayer indiscriminately lands on everything. You hope it also lands where you want it to.
After drenching everything in vinegar, I sat back and waited eagerly for the weeds to die. I expected, oh, for them to uproot themselves, stagger around, lean over the sewer in a last-ditch attempt to get some water, and keel over into it, leaving me with nothing to clean up. After just 15 minutes, they...did nothing. After an hour, they still did nothing. After 2 days, they appeared heartier than ever before and stuck out their tongues at me. After a week, I finally gave in and pulled them all out the old-fashioned way. In the process I may have muttered a few things about vinegar and gardening committees.
When the walk was finally weed-free and I could barely stand up anymore, I looked around at my handiwork. Then I looked next door, where weeds continued to happily grow large, extended families, and tsked. What is their problem? I thought.
It doesn't take much to go from slobbishness to self-righteousness.
2 comments:
Weeds? Those stink'n weeds giving you fits?
Will work for food (and a little RESPECT).....Just put those little yellow stickies on the weeds that need to go...............and me and my men will take em out!
No need to thank us just yet!
REspectfully,
Your MD Wildlife friends
P.S. Those little pewter hammers would come in handy.....the weeds may just pull up roots and sca-daddle!!!!
Last week, after a good soaking rain, I decided it was time to weed the garden. Some of those nasty weeds that I was getting rid of, nearly got rid of me. I ended up with a rash, an itchy rash, yup it was something like poison ivy.
As for white vinegar, it really does kill poison ivy. I didn't use a spray, just dumped the bottle of it on the plant and in a few days, it had withered up and died. I didn't utter any prayers over it either. Just said: Amen!
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