Recovering My Garden

Leaving a garden for six weeks in the spring definitely means you’ll come home to lots of work. We sure did!  Aphids, snails, some roses covered in black spot, some roses nearly dead, and not a lot of good growing going on. The broccoli was struggling. The kale didn’t make it, the arugula had already gone to seed and flower; at first glance it seemed like anything thriving in the garden was weeds. Including the six-foot-tall bindweed that had taken over a patch of our backyard. Actually the entire backyard was a tangled up mess of weeds and strawberry plants and my Dahlias trying to bust through. Oh and some random lilac shoots climbing out of the stone planter.

Sunflowers and garlic were thankfully growing strong, and some of my roses, my favorite rugosas and old English rose bush were covered in healthy, lovely scented blooms. Plus there were bunches of strawberries left.  I could come home to roses and strawberries any day.

I tackled some of the smaller tasks first like getting all the weeds out of the raised beds and getting our beans, yellow squash and onions in along with some more arugula, although it’s been so hot and dry for us here that I’m not sure this new crop of arugula will make it either.

Then I got Greg to help me in the backyard where the bindweed had completely covered over the raised beds in back. Ever since we built the beds in front, I’ve halfway ignored the ones in back, sometimes planting flowers or late summer/fall crops, but this year it just looked like a crazy, scary jungle. 

I was so smug when we left Georgia and its KUDZU behind all those years ago. Uhhhgg! Bindweed is my own form of Kudzu! As in, it’s a complete fast growing menace, climbing over and killing everything in its wake, and nearly impossible to eradicate. 

Along with all the other projects we have going on inside our 101-year-old house, we’d like to do something fun after we clean up all the bindweed and rip out the old rotten wood from the beds. Keep your fingers crossed! (Or wave your magic wand for me and magically redo our entire backyard!)