Liking your feedback; still fighting the weeds
People are so nice. I like to think I can be described as nice, but then I’m not very social and some of the behaviour that comes with that can considered not being nice, but I am a nice person, really — I am.
I am going somewhere with this. I answer every person who is nice enough to email me. That does not necessarily mean that I am nice, but I am very grateful and encouraged that anyone would take the time out of their day to actually sit down and write me something nice. (There’s that nice word again).
I am the kind of person who thinks “I must do that” and then I don’t and the person on the other end misses out on the pleasure I get when someone actually reaches out to me.
This is on my mind for a reason; email. It isn’t rocket science but sometimes it might as well be if there is one little glitch to throw me off.
Case in point; a few weeks ago, I almost didn’t get a lovely email from a regular reader, but I did get it because she was nice enough to go to extra trouble to ensure that I did.
Kathy wrote “Your ‘janicew@ nf.sympatico.ca.’ is listed at the end of your column in the paper and bounced back.
Had to go on line and search for another email — you are probably missing many emails.”
If there’s one thing that would make me sadder than not getting any e-mails at all, it would be missing them. If you’ve sent me an email which was not delivered, please send it again to jwelloeo@hotmail.com.
Yesterday I forwarded an email to Newman before I answered it. Then “it” wouldn’t let me answer the original sender. I have no idea even what “it” is, and “it” could have something to do with me, but I can never get the best of “it.”
Let’s go back to nice people and a lovely couple who came up to me in Coleman’s to tell me that they were glad I was writing some columns about gardening again because it was my columns that got them started as gardeners, especially because I wrote about all the things I did wrong in the garden. They figured if I could laugh at my mistakes, they could, too.
Yesterday I rescued two peonies from the goutweed. The first one seemed like it was growing up and around the stump of an old tree. It was only when I started on the second one (which I didn’t even know was there) also all-around stump like matter that I started wondering if it could be decades old peony roots instead stumps. If so they’ll
never bloom because they’re not supposed to be on the surface, but I wouldn’t put anything past that goutweed including devouring soil.
Why doesn’t she know what’s in her own garden, you might well ask. Because unless you get out there early, as I could this year, the goutweed has grown high enough to hide all kinds of things. This year I discovered a poor little frittilaria and several batches of anemones I also didn’t know I had.
What is goutweed? I guess it depends on how you look at it. The good news is that goutweed is a vigorous perennial plant that will grow and spread in any kind of soil or shade. The bad news is that goutweed is a vigorous perennial that will grow and spread in any kind of soil or shade.
It isn’t unattractive, comes in
solid green or variegated. Mine is solid. The first year I was here I thought I had a yard full of Queen Anne’s lace. Alas, it was the flower of the goutweed.
The variegated variety is more attractive and not quite as hard to control. You may even see it in nurseries, perhaps called Bishop’s Weed. Unless you have a place that you want to cover where it can never ever, ever, escape, don’t buy it.
The gentleman who made this garden tried everything; landscape cloth, 12-inch deep edgings, black plastic, mulch and bricks.
I’m fighting it in certain places but mostly I’ve already conceded.