My title doubles for the name of my new one person band; me and my diggy-prying tool singing to the strawberries.
I used to really like violets. My favorite color was decidedly purple. When I was I kid I imagined that I'd name my first daughter violet, and I was always thrilled when I'd find them growing in someone's lawn.
But the story has changed, I'm afraid. Violets are one of the worst weeds in my garden, and I've spent all weekend trying to rescue the poor strawberries from their grasp. When we got here the strawberries were invisible under a jungle of tall thistles and grass; it was our first weeding job to free them. It's evident now, a week and a half later, that in all of our clueless enthusiasm ("We're weeding! In a real garden! Wowee!") we didn't do a very good job. You can't pull violets up by their roots--they grow in clumps with big, horizontal, tuberous roots just under the surface, and when you pull, you just get the stems. My tool of the week is a long diggy-prying tool that in the past I've seen used to get out long dandelion roots; it's the best way to pry violets out of the soil too. The problem is, the violets really like to grow right at the root of my strawberry plants. More than once this weekend I found myself triumphantly raising a violet clump only to find that I'm also holding up a poor, uprooted strawberry, gasping in the air. I guess I'm accidentally thinning our over-crowded little patch.
The best thing about violets, though, is how SATISFYING they are to dig up. Unlike grass, at which you can dig and pull for a long while without much victory, violets pop out of the ground with a satisfying THUMP! when you get the diggy-pryer under them just right. This work is full to brimming of little victories.
I used to really like violets. My favorite color was decidedly purple. When I was I kid I imagined that I'd name my first daughter violet, and I was always thrilled when I'd find them growing in someone's lawn.
But the story has changed, I'm afraid. Violets are one of the worst weeds in my garden, and I've spent all weekend trying to rescue the poor strawberries from their grasp. When we got here the strawberries were invisible under a jungle of tall thistles and grass; it was our first weeding job to free them. It's evident now, a week and a half later, that in all of our clueless enthusiasm ("We're weeding! In a real garden! Wowee!") we didn't do a very good job. You can't pull violets up by their roots--they grow in clumps with big, horizontal, tuberous roots just under the surface, and when you pull, you just get the stems. My tool of the week is a long diggy-prying tool that in the past I've seen used to get out long dandelion roots; it's the best way to pry violets out of the soil too. The problem is, the violets really like to grow right at the root of my strawberry plants. More than once this weekend I found myself triumphantly raising a violet clump only to find that I'm also holding up a poor, uprooted strawberry, gasping in the air. I guess I'm accidentally thinning our over-crowded little patch.
The best thing about violets, though, is how SATISFYING they are to dig up. Unlike grass, at which you can dig and pull for a long while without much victory, violets pop out of the ground with a satisfying THUMP! when you get the diggy-pryer under them just right. This work is full to brimming of little victories.
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