Vanquishing Evil

Yesterday morning I spent a pleasurable few hours in my garden. I weeded and cleaned eight of my raised beds. The dead asparagus fronds are cut back, the brussels sprouts are gone, I ripped out the now-bitter lettuces and the over-wintered parsley that got surprisingly unruly.

Now the beds are clean. A mostly blank canvas for my spring planting artistry. I'm keeping the chard, onions, garlic, a little lettuce, beet greens, celery, some parsley that re-seeded, and the newly planted potatoes.

Don't mind the beer can in that asparagus bed. It's slug bait.

So as I'm pulling weeds and pulling weeds and adding to the contours of our compost pile with more weeds. Did I mention weeds? I got to thinking about how our yard used to be weed-wise and how it is now. I realized we invited the axis of evil onto our property. And not just invited. That implies it would have to make its own way here. We made an appointment, went over and labored to get it into the trailer, carefully hauled it home, and tenderly laid it in our pristine raised beds.

Yes. We got "compost" from our local horse stable. And two of the most nefarious weeds known to man.

1. Johnson Grass. It is the root of all evil because of its friggin' long, brittle, and well-branched roots. It sacrifices its green above-ground parts without a second thought (or even a first one) because it can easily grow one hundred seventeen more from its prolific root system that's not only got a choke-hold on your tender asparagus crowns, but has already made two laps around your entire raised bed. Mwahahaha.

2. I don't know the name of this one:

but if you know evil when you see it, then your very soul is shuddering. I call it Seed-Poppin' weed. This sucker flings seeds literal feet away if you just happen to brush by it. Its seeds set long jump records if you actually try to pull it. It has a shallow root system and pulls easily, but it doesn't matter because its far-flung one hundred seventeen seeds happily take its place. And more. And it is invisible until it gets to this seed-poppin' state. Mwahahaha.

So the evil in my raised beds is vanquished. For now. The Axis will be back. Oh, yes, they will be back. But for now I get to enjoy the accomplishment of cleaned beds. I get to remember the hours spent in the sunshine and quiet with moist earth in my hands. And then I remember that chickens like to dig in the compost pile and eat Seed-Poppin' weeds and Johnson Grass. And I get to say, "Mwahahaha". And, "Cue the scary JAWS score!".