Is it safe to move plants?
Talking a LAT; discouraging goutweed migration
Sometimes you just don’t know what you don’t know. Until I wrote last week’s article I didn’t know that I didn’t know anything about Apartners. I thought I was being very avant-garde (i.e. trend setting for non-boomers) to have found out about LAT (Living Apart Together) and to share it with all of you who I assumed knew as little as I did about the fact that it is a recognized and increasing social phenomenon. I do apologize for that.
I also thank the people who wrote that the article was “oh so true” and “right on” etc. and shall remain anonymous to prevent any possible ruffling of feathers.
This next email leads to some more illuminating reading; “I really enjoyed your piece about LAT — I am a Canadian filmmaker currently directing a documentary about this very topic! I myself have been what I call an Apartner for twenty years. All the best, Sharon Hyman”. http://apartnersthemovie.com
I’ll go on to something else I don’t know if I know; is it ever safe to move plants from a garden with goutweed to another garden? Ok, I do know that it isn’t ever completely safe but what I’ve been struggling over is will I try it and when and how is the safest.
Sharon writes, in an article reprinted in Physiology Today, “For the record, I am not an advocate for couples living apart. What I am an advocate for is having options. I just do not believe that there is only one way to love, no one-sized-fitsall, cookie-cutter way to have a relationship. (And cooking is not my strong suit, either). It is all about what works best for you and your mate.” I knew a couple in Stephenville who did just that. A widow and a widower, they both preferred living alone but were a committed couple that enjoyed each other’s company for decades. Now that I’ve caused enough trouble for another week, I’ll go on to something else I don’t know if I know; is it ever safe to move plants from a garden with goutweed to another garden? Ok, I do know that it isn’t ever completely safe but what I’ve been struggling over is will I try it and when and how is the safest.
The St. John’s garden has masses of sweet (or dame’s) rockets, old-fashioned columbine, and cornflowers that have
simply reseeded themselves over the years and taken over wherever they felt like it.
I would love to have them doing just that in the land by the graveyard in Heart’s Content. I could dig up 50 plants, no problem, but even though some of the neighbours there are well over 300 years old, I’d still feel guilty about introducing them to goutweed. One solution would be to collect seeds from the plants I want and scatter them in Heart’s Content. Well, I’ve never had much luck at scattering seeds and mature roots compete better with existing plant material and give quicker results.
The cornflowers are almost finished blooming. The rocket and the columbine have a little while yet. My idea is to dig them up, thoroughly wash the roots with the hose, pot them up in clean soil and leave them over the winter. Any miscreant piece of goutweed will show itself in the spring and I can get rid of that pot all together.
What if every pot has gout weed? It sounds like an awful lot of work for something that may not work at all if you know what I mean. Even so, today it sounds worth doing but at the same time sounds like something I doubt I will ever do all by myself.
(How did I end up at this stage in my life never once having had enough sense to get tangled up with a gardener?) An apartner might offer to help, just as I might offer to help him mow the lawn. Ha ha. As I understand it, one of the attractions of apartnering is not feeling guilty or resentful about doing or not doing domestic chores, which I suppose includes outdoors.
But what do I know?