War on weeds: The relentless rise of star of Bethlehem
Normally I’m a pretty laid-back kind of person. Live and let live, I say.
But right now I’m a madman, seething with fury because the rain has kept me from working in my yard — and there’s much that needs doing.
I know that every second I sit here typing, weeds are taking advantage of me and doing a heck of a job taking over the yard.
They’re relentless. They don’t sleep. They don’t pause for meals. Their entire being is focused on defeating me so they can bloom and spread even more of themselves. It’s what they’ve evolved to do, and they’re good at it.
I know there will be other sunny days for digging, but I feel I need every minute to rip out the worst of my enemies — which, ironically, is a flower, and a pretty little thing at that. It even has a nice name: Star of Bethlehem. They’re the prettiest and the most annoying. They’re perennials, sprouting from bulbs deep in the dirt each spring, with small white flowers that last a week or so.
I can’t remember planting these things, but I might have. Or they may have grown from seeds tossed around by the wind. Anyway, there were just a few, and the flowers were beautiful. After they finished blooming, the vegetation dried up and disappeared.
After a few years, though, the vegetation still disappeared — but it left behind large gaps where it had crowded out other plants. When the stars covered almost the entire yard, this became a problem.
While there are scores of posts on the internet trying to sell these flowers, none mentions the spreading problem. But there are some sites where homeowners rail against them and suggest ways to kill them.
I’m digging and pulling as hard as I can — which, unfortunately, isn’t very hard — but it’s easy to fall behind. A couple of days of rain and everything seems to grow a foot. It’s not that bad if you have a regular lawn with grass. But I have a lot of flowers, and some weeds look a lot like flowers when they’re young.
Herbicides are not the answer. Some are recommended by horticultural sites, but if I tried using them, it would probably be a disaster. I might end up killing everything within a mile radius. My neighbors would not like losing all their grass, I’m sure.
Meanwhile, in other neglected parts of the yard, a vine I’ve spent years digging up has reappeared and is spreading. And a Rose of Sharon bush that I planted has apparently decided it needs to populate the entire yard with sprouts.
Why can’t they be like the daffodils — come up, bloom with pretty yellow flowers and then die back? Sure, they spread, but slowly enough that I can keep up.
I will survive, if not persevere. Weeding is a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
