Opening day of my 2016 garden season was in March on an unusual sunny day when the temperature was a balmy sixty degrees. On that rare day I attacked my thistle with glyphosate. I had to spray them twice to slow them down. Since then, the weather has not cooperated, and my body hasn’t either. This week, however, things changed. The Lord switched Illinois from spring into summer with a flick of his Godly touch. Last week it was wet, in the forties and windy, or another way to say it, perfect hypothermia conditions. As I write this it is Thursday morning, and the Lord switched us back to early spring again. The first three days of the week were in the eighties and required the air-con to run during the daytime.
I spent the good days in my garden finishing what I began in March. The pond came first. Ponds get weedy just like flower beds, and it is necessary to pull the unwanted critters to achieve a serene pond look. I also had a bed of irises overtaking the north end, and had to thin it out. The job looked like an hour of easy work in my mind, but turned into three hours of hard labor.
Over the last eight years I invented a system to access pond plants without treading in the water. I span a ten foot extension ladder across the water and lay some wide boards on the rungs to create a platform. I then crawl out onto the ladder on my hands and knees and lay on the boards. This allows me to reach over the water to pull plants, or to reach into the water to fertilize the lilies. When done, I had two bushels full of unwanted plant matter to dispose of. The pond looks much better and the lilies may even bloom now that they got a shot of fertilizer.
The second day I attacked the thistle invasion in my front yard. By now the critters were three feet tall and poking through the Mugo pine. Trust me, thistle does not add curb appeal to any home. It was five days since the last rain so the ground was very hard and I needed a spade to loosen the plants enough to pull them. I was in the morning sun and the temp was already in the eighties. I wilted, but that damn thistle thrives in that temperature. The goal was to complete the entire front of the house, but I only lasted long enough to complete a third. The remainder awaits me. I would be pulling thistle this morning except for the rain. I opted for dry and cool inside conditions.
Pulling thistle always gets me to think philosphically. The root system of the plant forms a runner underground and will send shoots up from the runner. When pulling the main stems the root breaks from the runner. That means another shoot will soon emerge from the runner in another place. I pictured the thistle as a muslim jihadis. We continue to kill these bastards but they keep popping up again. If we truly want to rid ourselves of jihadists we have to learn from the thistle. Destroying the visible plant is not enough, we have to get at the root of the problem. In the case of jihadis the root is in the unseen cell (underground root system) which continues to fester and grow into a new warrior. A garden warrior(like me)does not know in which direction the root grows or how far it will grow before a new shoot pops up. If left unattended the shoot grows to maturity, then flowers, and then seeds. The seeds blow in the wind to spread wide and far (Islamic immigrants and refugees).
In order to destroy thistle or muslims complete annihilation is the safest most complete method. I call it the Hitler method. Even though, I do not like muslims and am not afraid to say so, I just can’t bring myself to think about annihilating two billion people, they can’t all be bad. The problem is learning which ones will become bad and to destroy them. A better way I propose is to convert muslims to another belief system. Even the best and most influential dictators in the world like Joe Stalin and Mao Tse Tsung were not smart enough to accomplish conversion, so it brings me back to annihilation again. Do we keep pulling the big weeds, even though that allows some of our flowers to perish along the way, or do we initiate an all out war of annihilation? What do you think?
Next time I will compare muslims to the fallen angels.
Filed under: Biography, Garden, Government, Pond, religion | Tagged: Glyphosate, muslims, Thistle, Wabbit Wars | Leave a comment »
