What a nasty job! We know this sedge, or whatever it is, as ‘razor grass’ because it cuts like razors. It is difficult to pull from the rocky creek bottom and bank with the creeping stolons still attached. The creek is mucky. The water is wet. The gloves I wear to avoid getting slashed obviously get just as mucky and wet.
It was such a miserable job last autumn that we postponed most of it for winter. I figured that I could wait for the dangerous foliage to die back, and then just pull up the stolons below the dead foliage. It might have been a good idea, if only we had returned to actually execute our plan. By the time we got back, new foliage was already maturing.
I was so dreading returning to this job, but then found that the fresh new foliage was not nearly as dangerous as the more mature foliage that we pulled late last summer and autumn Furthermore, the new rosettes had not dispersed their roots quite as firmly as expected. They were suspiciously easy to pull, with the stolons still attached. Dead old rosettes seemed to be completely necrotic and decayed. It was too easy.
I expect at least a few new rosettes will develop later. There were likely some down under the muck that were not up when I was there. I also expect that some will grow from bits of stolon that were left behind. However, nothing has been seen in the past three weeks or so since we did this. (I would have shared these pictures sooner, but there were other pictures to share instead.)
Speaking of other pictures to share, there are six more on my secondary ‘Six on Saturday‘ post. I did not want to save them for later because they are almost irrelevant to horticulture, but I did not want to delete them without first sharing either.
1. Sedge, or whatever it is, is difficult to handle, and is even more difficult to handle when trying to separate the stolons from the stones on the bank of the creek.
2. It did not take long to fill each of these plastic bins. I did not leave any foliage hanging over the edge, because I did not want to get cut when picking up the bins.
3. These bins can be used as a flotation device. Actually, it was rather annoying that they kept floating away until they got filled. It was a nice day to be in the creek.
4. This acorus grass was mostly overwhelmed by the sedge, or whatever it is. I should have gotten a ‘before’ picture. It looks great now, and is happy in the muck.
5. While pulling sedge, I found these two knees developing from the roots of one of our two bald cypress. This particular tree was supposed to be a dawn redwood.
6. I also noticed that the montbretia was blooming more than it normally does down in the deep shade. It is a voracious weed too, but inhibits even worse weeds.
This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate:
https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/
It is fair to say that garden verbena, Verbena X hybrida, is a reliable warm season annual. It gets planted in spring to spread out and bloom through summer with bright pink, red, purple or almost blue, or softer pastel pink or pale white. It is commonly replaced with cool season annuals by late autumn. However, garden verbena is actually a short term perennial that can survive winter to bloom for a few years.
Lawn is the carpeting for our outdoor spaces. Like pavement or decking, it makes the space in or gardens useful for more than growing other plants. Since it is designed to share its space with us, we give it more ground space than any other type of plant. For what it contributes, most of us do not mind giving lawn all the water and attention that it requires. It really seems indispensable.
The easier name is ‘dawn redwood’. I just used the big and fancy Latin name because that is how landscape designers with something to prove say it. If the big name does not impress clients, an explanation of how rare it is, and that it is one of only a few deciduous conifers, will likely do the job. Even back when it was still a fad, I got the impression that was its main function; to impress clients.
If California poppy had not been designated as the California state flower, Matilija poppy, Romneya coulteri, might have been. It was nominated, but was less popular at the time, partly because it was familiar only to those near its native range in Southern California. Some of us know it as ‘fried egg flower’, because the big and floppy white flowers with yellow centers look like fried eggs.
It is hard to say why boulders and sculptural stone are sometimes incorporated into American landscapes. A long time ago, boulders were only left in landscapes if they were to big and heavy to move out of the way or break apart. Early American landscapes were designed to express dominance over nature by replacing as much of it as possible with unnaturally organized landscapes.
This is why I do not bother growing greens in the garden just yet. Wild radish grows here wild; and there is way too much of it. Most but not all of it gets mown in meadows or cut down with weed whackers on the edges of roadways. There is no need to cut down that which is out of the way. Besides, we could not cut it all even if we wanted to. There is wild turnip and mustard too. All are prolifically naturalized and invasive exotic species.
Generally, that is how they are. Almost all perennial pea flowers bloom with the same bright purplish pink color of the bloom in the picture below. That is, of course, before their pods develop, but you get the point. We sort of know what to expect from them.
It is impossible to say who the parents were. So many specie were hybridized to develop the many cultivars of flowering maple that the Latin name of the collective group is simply Abutilon X hybridum, which means exactly what it looks like. They are hybrids of various and rarely documented species of Abutilon. The ‘X’ dispels any doubt. ‘Chinese lantern’ is another common name.
