It's chilly and rainy again. I don't expect flip-flop weather for another six or eight weeks, but I did wear a pair on Saturday, when it reached 70 degrees. Such a tease.
Yesterday was beautiful too, cool and sunny, so I turned on the outside water and whipped up some poison for the weeds that are invading the planting beds. I use twice as much Roundup concentrate as suggested on the bottle, in a five-gallon watering can that I use only for poison. I had fun drawing skull-and-crossbones all over it with permanent marker. Although I usually go organic, I just love watching clumps of grass and dandelions turn yellow and shrivel.
I got a batch of "mushroom soil" that I used as mulch last year… it turns out this mushroom soil wasn't the same as the real stuff from Kennett Square, PA, mushroom capital of the world. There aren't supposed to be weed seeds in mushroom soil, nor are there supposed to be old corncobs, pantyhose or hunks of plastic. There's one weed in particular that I never saw around here before, and I blame the "mushroom soil" from the farm down the road. (Not to be confused with the farm around the corner that grows the best veggies in the world.) This new weed is everywhere. It's low and crawling and flowers and reseeds rampantly. So this year the makers of Roundup get my money, and the farm down the road doesn't.
The folks who lived in this house before us brought a couple of old-fashioned lilacs from their former home in Philly. Word around the neighborhood is that they are over 100 years old, like the leaded glass window they installed above the doorway between the kitchen and family room. These lilacs really needed some rejuvenation. Here's what I did: I removed the oldest canes at ground level, being careful not to remove more than one-third of the plant. Here's what I didn't do: I didn't prune the lilacs for shape, that cuts off the unformed flower buds. Flowers bloom only on old wood on these non-hybrid beauties. I can't wait for them to flower in May, their fragrance can float for twenty feet or more! The one near the front porch is glorious. One flower cluster in a vase perfumes the whole house.
