Okay,
strictly speaking not the garden
path, but the path from the house to the driveway.
Back
in May, this thistle grew to a height of three feet before I finally stopped
walking around it and actually pulled it up.
Having done
so, I looked up the path and found myself thinking: Wasn’t this path originally
much wider? When exactly did it become so overgrown with weeds? It’s a
gravel path. How is it possible for there to be so many weeds?
The answers
to these various questions are: (a) yes, (b) slowly over several years and (c)
nature – as became clear on closer inspection.
Down on my
hands and knees to start the weeding, I realised:
-
Over the
winter lots of pine needles fall
-
Lots of
rain falls on the dead pine needles, turning them into a mushy pulp
-
Moss grows
on the mushy pulp
-
The
combination of moss and mushy pulp is all the encouragement many weeds need to sprout.
There you
have it. Botany 101.
I could, of
course, have simply sprayed the whole path with Roundup. (Oh,
ha, ha. As if that would ever happen.)
I managed to
weed (and widen) the path for about the first ten feet from the house, then
Juneuary set in. Too wet and too cold for weeding.
This week I
finally got back to and finished the job.
Quite the difference, n’est-ce pas? (Roxie is clearly impressed.)
And in
semi-path related news (well, the path is
in the photo), a reminder while I was eating dinner last night of one of the
many reasons I love living on Gabriola. I looked up from my book to see this.
Bambi eating
weeds ten feet away from me? Fantastic! (Bambo rampaging through the garden? Not
so much.)
