Conversation in the Weeds

It may be that if you weed too much, you get a bit goofy. Different weeds take on different personalities and you treat them accordingly. What follows is a conversation with one of my least favorites: Five-leafed Akebia.

Weeder: Good morning, Akebia shoot, I see you’re back.

FLA: Yup.

Weeder: I pulled you out just two weeks ago — maybe a week and a half.

FLA: (sullen) Yeah, that hurt. But I got over it.

Weeder: So why do you keep growing? Why do you keep strangling other plants? Why won’t you cooperate?

FLA: (flatly) It’s what I do. It’s my destiny

Weeder: But you’re so relentless.

FLA: It’s my purpose, to grow and reproduce. (livening) It’s your purpose, too, by the way: grow and reproduce.

Weeder: Well, yes, but I do other things as well.

FLA: (increasingly more engaged) Yeah, other stupid things. Like worrying about why you’re here. Stupid waste of time. You’re here because you’re here, that’s all. And worrying about purpose. Just grow and reproduce, like me. And multi-tasking. If you just stuck to one thing, you’d be a lot more productive, like me.

Weeder: Well, I was more restrained about the reproduction business: two children, max.

FLA: That’s fine for you, you’re taking over the earth anyway, with all your stupid buildings and your stupid chemicals and your stupid fancy plants. God, I hate those rhododendrons and how you baby them! Let them stand up for themselves and fight like real men, I say. We weeds have to keep growing just to keep up.

Weeder: OK, OK, granted, we aren’t very good stewards of the earth…

FLA: I’ll say. And we got here first.

Weeder: But why do you have to do your growing on my property? Can’t you fulfill your destiny somewhere else?

FLA: I like you.

Weeder: LIKE ME! How can you like me? I do my best to eradicate you. Not that I’m very successful at it.

FLA: Actually, I even love you. Because you don’t use chemicals. Remember when your neighbors drowned the place with Roundup?

Weeder: Yeah, the whole neighborhood reeked for a week, made me choke.

FLA: (angry and morose) And then they came back and did it again. Wiped out my whole family, they did. Uncle Charlie, Aunt Mildred, all my brothers and sisters, all the little nieces and nephews. It was devastating. Planticide! An herbal holocaust!

Weeder: Well, although I hated it at the time, it worked.

FLA: (outraged) It certainly did, all too well. We’ve had to redouble our efforts on your side of the fence.

Weeder: Well, thank you very much.

FLA: And another thing. If you’d just stop worrying about those fancy plants and put up an arbor for me to grow on, we’d get along a lot better. I could be beautiful. I could hide that awful mess that your stupid mechanic son makes in the back yard — all those tires and trucks. It looks like Appalachia back there…

Weeder: Yes I know. I try…

FLA: (primping) I would be beautiful. I have round rich green leaves in neat clusters of five. I have pretty little flowers…

Weeder: I’ve never seen your flowers.

FLA: (outraged again) See that! You haven’t been looking. All you do is yank and snip, yank and snip. You don’t even pay attention to what you’re doing! Stop and smell the roses — oops, I mean honeysuckle — Weeder. My flowers are subtle.

Weeder: I’ll think about it — that arbor thing. But only if you promise not to go anywhere else in the garden.

FLA: No promises.

Weeder: Well, then…

FLA: OW!!

The Futility of Weeding

“The stateliest building man can raise is the ivy's food at last.” – Charles Dickens, novelist (1812-1870)

In other words, it’s the goal and destiny of plants to take over the earth.

Advice on Weeding

When I first started weeding, I hardly knew what was a weed and what was not. I could identify roses and daffodils, tulips, day lilies, lily of the valley, and a few more, but not a whole lot more.

As I watched the landscape over the spring and summer, things popped up, proliferated, and came back the next year. I was cautious. I knew that 100 years ago, the land was farmed and managed by a great aunt who really knew her stuff when it came to wildflowers and other plants. So, like hunting for a long lost Declaration of Independence hidden in the back of a drawer, I searched the landscape for extraordinary plants.

It turns out, there were none. What grew there was an ordinary collection of suburban Philadelphia flora, some good — a few very shy trillium — some not so good — pokeweed, which some consider a weed and others grow intentionally as an ornamental — and some downright horrible — a collection of invasive Asian immigrants (see my previous blog, "Thugs in the Garden").

Since I spend so much time weeding, I thought I’d offer some random advice.

Know Your Weeds
There are many books and web sites that identify weeds. I’ve found “Invasive Plants of the Eastern United States” particularly helpful for the real thugs. Of course, it helps to know the name of what you’re looking for so that you can find a photo of the plant to compare with what you have. But most books and websites have photos that you can browse through. The advice of experienced gardeners, who are almost universally generous, is invaluable.

Pay Attention
It’s easy to get carried away. You’re busily pulling some vine or other, the mind wanders, and all of a sudden, you’re elbow deep in poison ivy or you’ve yanked something that you paid a fortune for a few years ago at the garden store and forgot about.

Go Out Early in the Morning
Before the heat of the day and preferably after a rain. Weeds are easier to pull from moist soil than from dry, baked ground. Follow the sun, or rather the shade, in summer.

Be Prepared
There will be bugs — mosquitoes and midges. I put on a Bert’s Bees anti-insect concoction, which seems to help. I also wear long pants, socks, boots, and a long-sleeved shirt (usually with the sleeves rolled up) when I’m doing heavy weeding in the field and woodland beyond the lawn. I know, it’s hot. But it’s protection against insects and prickles. I only wear gloves when I’m dealing with thorns, poison ivy, or mile-a-minute vine. I can't feel the plants and roots with gloves on.

Water, Water, Water
I mean drink it yourself. No need to say more.

On Compulsivity
Yes, you can just weed-wack weeds. But they will come back. Some are masochists and love being weed-wacked. I pull as much as I can, to get the roots. Pull slowly and carefully, otherwise, the stem may break and the root will still be there, ready to continue growing when your back is turned. Get them early, the more mature they are, the harder it is to get all the roots. In plants with rhizomes, it's impossible.

Prioritize
I will never get rid of all the weeds in my landscape and neither will you. They're hardy and determined, which is why they've persisted for so long. But there are some, the thugs that crowd out everything else,and the strangle vines, that have my attention. I will certainly never eradicate fiveleafed akebia or Japanese honeysuckle. But each year I have a goal to push them back further, starting from the edges, and, of course, rescuing rhododendrons, laurel, and any other legitimate plant from their clutching tendrils.

After Work
I always take a thorough shower, even if it’s cool and I haven’t gotten sweaty or muddy. I also examine my body as thoroughly as I can. We have a substantial resident deer population that brings with it deer ticks, carriers of Lyme Disease. I’ve had it twice and it’s not fun. Vigilance — and I mean vigilance, dear ticks are distinguishable from a speck of dirt only with a magnifying glass — helps.

Above All, Enjoy
Yes, it’s work, but satisfying work, good for the body, good for the soul. A great stress reliever and workout. Don't kill yourself. Stop while you still have time to sit back and enjoy. And so it won't hurt as much the next morning.

Thugs in the Garden — A Few Least Favorite Weeds

Many people garden. I just weed. Sure, I install a few pretty plants from time to time and some actually survive. Others don’t. And it’s no wonder because more often than not, I promptly forget their names. A child whose parent doesn’t even remember his or her name will have a hard time thriving.

I also water — sometimes. But I mostly weed.

Starting about 15 years ago, when we moved house, and as a neophyte gardener, I let a lot of the vegetation around our house go. I knew about poison ivy and a few other things, but if a plant had some attribute that I thought was attractive — a nice berry, a pretty flower — I left it alone. And then I learned. They all must have been out there cheering. “Hoo, Boy! An ignoramus! What luck!” And they proceeded to party. Well, not party exactly. Some leapt into the trees; some tunneled underground. Others just had sex. With great frequency. Summer after summer.

What follows is a sampling of what I now know about a few of my least favorite weeds.

Fiveleaf Akebia
A 19th-century import from Asia that has become an invasive. With no natural enemies, it grows vociferously — 20 to 40 feet in a season, crowding out other plants and twining around shrubs and trees, strangling them. A vine that can grow for long distances underground, it wreaks havoc in many thickets and woodlands the Northeastern United States. I’ve seen it grown intentionally on an arbor as an ornamental. Beware if it escapes!

Japanese Knot Weed
Another Asian immigrant that has taken over, it grows in colonies with rhizomes that can run as far as 23 feet horizontally and 9 feet deep. Virtually impossible to get rid of without large doses of toxic chemicals. I keep pulling (really breaking off the stems from the rhizomes) in hopes that they might give up. They don’t. They just redouble their efforts, growing more stems from the broken root. It's used to make resveratrol but there's no chance of my turning it into a cash crop.

Mile-A-Minute Weed
Literally. It grows overnight. It's a very nasty customer with barbs all over its leaves as well as its stems, enabling it to attach itself to anything in reach. Unlike true vines, that have twining tendrils, Mile-A-Minute just smothers. It killed a Butterfly Bush when I wasn’t paying attention. It has beautiful dark blue berries. Don’t let them drop. They can survive in the soil for up to 7 years.

Goutweed, also Bishop’s Weed and Snow on the Mountain
At first I thought this was Queen Anne’s Lace because the flower, a lacy white, looks similar — at least it did to me. Turns out it’s a thug, crowding out everything around it and inhibiting natural diversity. It spreads underground by rhizomes. Fortunately, our resident groundhog likes it, but not enough. It’s taken me many hours over many summers to get it to a point where the groundhog, with a little help from me, can keep it somewhat in check.

Dockweed
Another thug that crowds out other plants. It likes moist areas but grows just fine at the top of my hill as well as at the bottom. Dock comes in several kinds, including curly and flat-leaved. It may have some qualities that make it good for cattle and I've heard that in Britain it's used as an antidote to insect bites. I don’t have any cattle and there’s no sign that the deer like it. They prefer plants for which I've laid out good money.

Pokeweed
A native, mostly poisonous to mammals unless cooked just right. Berries are not poisonous to birds. Grows up to 10 feet high and has clusters of dark blue berries that were used by Native Americans to make dye. Sometimes grown as an ornamental — they are quite striking. If you consider it a weed, pull it early. Once it gets tall and its tap root is established, it will break off when pulled.

Mystery Weed

This, I'm told is a weed, although I've learned to be cautious of other people's prejudices. Sometimes what someone else considers a weed, I'm willing to tolerate because I find it pretty or useful. (See definitions of weeds.) Of course, I've run into trouble that way. One or two is enough. The proliferation typical of weeds is too many. Anyone know what it is?

Go to the National Park Service website on aliens for more information on these and many other weeds,

A Definition of Weeds

So what exactly is a weed? Is it a plant that has weed in its name: goutweed, dockweed, chickweed? Not entirely. There are plenty of weeds that have seemingly innocuous names. Multiflora rose sounds pretty — many flowers. And it’s a rose isn’t it? Roses aren’t weeds. Well, they are when they take over everything in the landscape. Multiflora is considered an invasive.

Most plants have had some use at some point in history. And many so-called weeds have beneficial effects. Some repel insects and can be placed to protect other plants subject to those insects. Some are edible. Dandelions can be used in salads or made into tea. And some are poisonous — deadly nightshade, hemlock (beneficial only to those with suicidal or murderous intent).

Some common plants, such as English ivy, are considered weeds or even invasives, although ivy is carefully cultivated in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I keep it in check but I haven’t torn it out. It’s very useful: evergreen, covers bare spots, no fuss, it just does what it does without any attention from me. And I hope that it distracts my neighbors from the mess that is the rest of my landscape. (My neighbors’ yards, unlike mine, are all elegantly pruned, trimmed, and regularly nourished, but that’s another story.)

The standard tongue in cheek definitions of weeds are:

• A plant the use of which has yet to be discovered.
• A plant obsessed with sex (they do seem to grow much more vigorously than many plants purchased at some expense from the plant store).

But my favorite definition of a weed is a plant that’s growing where you don’t want it. In that case, it could be poison ivy or a broad-leafed grass in the middle of the lawn. Or it could be an antique tea rose.

The Venery Game

Let’s first get this straight. Venery has two meanings. One has to do with Venus and thus sex and by the extension of a few letters, a sexual disease. Sorry, that’s not the one I’m going to talk about.

The other meaning comes from Latin and Old French, to hunt, and also refers to the beasts that are hunted, their individual names and their names in groups.

The proper naming of groups of animals is an ancient art. Although it wasn’t solidified until the great blossoming of the English language in the 15^th century, Merlin probably taught it to King Arthur (along with the more dramatic parts of Arthur’s education that we know about — or think we know about thanks to T.H. White). It was important, sitting at the Round Table after the hunt, for a knight to know the proper names of the beasts that he had met during the day. And important to respect the beasts sufficiently to give them their appropriate names.

So, lions (although unlikely to be found in the English countryside) come in prides. Crows come in murders. Foxes are grouped in skulks, geese form gaggles, and fish are well schooled.

A book by James Lipton on the naming of groups of animals, first published in the late ’60s, was titled An Exaltation of Larks, and invited readers to play the game of making up names for a host of groups (there we go again — many things can be grouped in hosts), from aardvarks to yuppies. We might, for instance, say a coolness of yuppies, an incision of surgeons, a mess of adolescents, a didact of deans, and so on. It becomes addictive once you start. There’s an old saw about two Oxford dons walking down a street and passing several ladies of the night. One calls them a platter of tarts, the other, an English literature specialist, pronounces them a volume of Trollopes. And so it goes.

Lately, I’ve been concerned with weeds. Relentless, ubiquitous, and thriving: gout weed, knot weed, dock weed, and five-leafed akebia. I hear that this cool and rainy spring and summer of 2009 have been good for plants. They’ve been especially good for weeds — encouraging them, egging them on in their nasty scheme to take over the world — or at least my piece of it. I pull them and they come back. Some are masochists. “Oh, do it again,” they shriek and grow faster, bigger, higher. Some, like poison ivy, are sneaky. They hide and run underground only to pop up somewhere else, having grown four feet of vine under cover. It took me three years of summer weekends to get rid of the poison ivy in our front bed. And still, each summer a few stems pop up and thumb their noses at me.

Determined — that’s what they are. A determination of weeds.