Poor Richard’s Almanac

Okay, we’ll admit it: Here at Hawk’s Haven, we’re huge Conan fans. We love “Conan the Barbarian,” and Silence Dogood also loves “Conan the Destroyer,” though our friend Ben is less enamoured of this second Conan movie. Not that we wouldn’t both love to see many, many more! Too bad Arnold Schwarzenegger had to go off and become Governor of California instead of making Conan sequels.

Springtime always reminds our friend Ben of Conan’s leitmotif, Friedrich Nietsche’s “That which does not kill us makes us stronger,” because, while I have some doubts about its application to people, there’s not even a shred of doubt in my mind that it applies to weeds. Dandelions, garlic mustard, Norway maple seedlings, celandine poppies, poison ivy, oriental bittersweet, pigweed, dock, lamb’s-quarters, solanum, bindweed, multiflora rose, sumac, some horrific polygonum from Japan that floated down the stream one day and set up shop on our banks: Hawk’s Haven certainly has its share of invasives. And of course there are also those plants that have simply overstepped their bounds, fine in their place but a nightmare in our gardens: English ivy, pachysandra, lawn grass, lilies, jewelweed, trumpetvine, monarda, goldenrods, tansy, teasel, bamboo, rose-of-Sharon.

Ack!!! One hardly knows where to begin. And no sooner have you managed to weed out one invader and moved on to the next when, horror of horrors, the first one is making a comeback! We’re organic gardeners here, so herbicides are out of the question. We go out in the gardens and pull. And then we typically give the results of our efforts to our chickens or our compost piles, unless they spread by creeping stems, in which case they’re tossed onto the lawn to dry and die. But a lot of weeds seem to enjoy pulling back. (Thank God we don’t have thistles here, the absolute worst in this respect.) And in a tug of war with nature, nature usually wins. So we’ve settled for staying one step ahead and girding ourselves for next year’s battles, because we know that, like spring itself, those weeds are going to come back.

Mercifully, spring offers the gardener some consolation in the form of self-sown seedlings from desirable plants as well. Just yesterday, our friend Ben was delighted to see that new clumps of European wild ginger (Asarum europaeum) and pulmonaria had appeared in the shaded side garden. Hellebore, hosta, and white-flowered bleeding heart seedlings had sprung up all over a small circle of highly unsatisfactory shaded lawn. (I’ve already posted about the old-fashioned bleeding heart seedlings, now handsome plants in their own right, that colonized the foundation borders in front of the house.) Even our peonies exhibit this tendency to volunteer and add to the Hawk’s Haven floral display.

So the cycle continues, the annual battle against the invaders, the annual rejoicing at the appearance of unexpected pleasures. Now that our friend Ben thinks about it, I guess that which does not kill us gardeners makes us stronger, after all.