The Weed that Wants to Take Over our House

When we first moved into our house 7½ years ago, I was excited about all the garden beds. 

I was a fool.

They’re basically a pain in the patooti. Because of all the trees I don’t have enough light for the English cottage garden I wanted.  The plants I love that do grow well in the shade such as hostas and hydrangeas are also loved by the multitude of deer that use the garden as a salad bar.

I’m usually pretty good with the garden in the spring, and our gardens are lovely that time of year, particularly when the azaleas and the dogwoods are in bloom.

But there are a lot of beds to maintain, and the one thing that consistently grows well is a weed that comes up from the woods each year.  It’s very invasive, and since we don’t use pesticides because of all the wildlife, the only way I know to keep on top of it is constant weeding.  

Now, summertime in Virginia is hot and humid. That plus the fact that I am ridiculously attractive to mosquitoes, is not conducive for me to want to work in the garden.  Mosquitoes LOVE me.  They think I’m a hot babe.  The Cameron Diaz of mosquito-land.  And this summer has been particularly bad weather-wise. I’ve been keeping the beds along the front walk presentable, but the last time I've spent weeding the rest of the place was more than a month ago.

These weeds grow fast.  They grow like well … weeds. I tried to ignore the fact that they were choking out the back garden, but some of them had grown almost to my waist.  So today instead of doing something fun like painting furniture or bargain hunting, I doused myself with DEET and headed out.

Six hours later I was hot, sweaty and itchy, and my back ached from bending over all day.  I did however have a sense of accomplishment for all that I had done.

 Before

After



That sense of accomplishment lasted for about one minute – until I walked around to the side of the house.

(Cue the “EEK, EEK, EEK” scary movie music.)

If anyone has any environmentally-friendly ideas to keep these things at bay, please let me know.  Otherwise, if you don’t hear from me for awhile, someone may want to check to see if they’ve succeeded in their evil plan to take over our house!