The hubris I have experienced in believing I could contain the yard weeds — by dint of labor and pulling them by the roots, a few focused chemical applications and sheer determination — has been shaken to its core. Defeated, deflated, I am.
When I was a kid some 50 years ago — and with my extreme Virgo penchant for discerning this from that — I was the family’s weeder. It was my job to hunt for the dandelions and plantains, use the weed-removing tool and keep the weeds in check. I did my job. Every week or so in the weed-growing season, I’d be out there and keeping the weeds from flowering and spreading.
Now?
The world of suburban-dwelling weeds — at least where I live in Central Maryland — has exploded over the years and particularly in the last decade, from what I can observe. It borders on the abominable, and, no, really, I don’t want to hear your treatise on how weeds aren’t weeds, and they help the pollinators. I plant/have/share/spread hundreds of hellebores and other flowering plants. I have contributed to the pollinators, on my own over the years, and in mother’s yard where we live together now with the various fruit trees and bushes, flowers and vegetables.
It’s just insane, this weed situation. The crabgrasses I never even knew existed in decades prior. The take-over-and-never-leave interlopers. The green-today-nasty-looking-tomorrow invaders.
I’m trying to walk the line between the two worlds of super-lovely, super-green, gotta-pay-a-lawn-service green lawns I see, and the wicked world of mostly weed-lawns. I do understand that weeds left unchecked, unmowed and unmanaged create all the more need for the green-lawn-lovers who are applying herbicides on the regular.
To have one neighbor who wants a nice, green, lush lawn next to another who cares not a hoot and wants to use no chemicals creates more need for more chemicals when their weed-seeds travel across the boundaries of land and property.
Feeling kinda overhelmed as surrounding neighbors let crabgrasses 18 inches high go to seed, unmowed; as I watch the Lesser Celandine weed (invasive AF) creep its way up the street house by house and begin to pop up in our yard; as I know our own yard spreads this and that weed, as well.
Do I think violet flowers peppered among the grass in early spring are pretty? I certainly do. Do I think tens of thousands of violet seedlings competing with grass later in the season are desirable? No, I don’t.
Do I grab handfuls of flowering weeds, stuff them into trash bags and hope to keep them at bay? I do. (In my contiguous neighbors’ yards, too.) Do I get out my clippers and cut the seed-stems of crabgrasses in my neighbor-who-rarely-cuts-his-yard yard? Yes, I do. Do I feel hopeful? No, not really. Should I do nothing? No, not really.
Frustrated, am I.
No solution, per se.
Venting.
Oh, and FWIW, if you do have Lesser Celandine (pictured) in your yard, you really want to keep that in check. Grab it before if flowers, and certainly when it does, skip the compost pile and put that stuff directly in the trash. You’ve been forewarned.
