Ugh! Opening day in the garden is always a drag, and procrastination delayed my arrival. I love blogging and sat down this morning and even early this afternoon to write, but it didn’t happen. The temperature settled at 85 degrees and the little man inside my head kept urging me to go outside to enjoy the day. “Okay,” I told him, “quit nagging me.” I decided to take a baby step and to spend one hour outside. I even had a plan, i.e. start cleaning the bed behind the kitchen window. That will only take an hour. Three and a half hours later, I dragged my weary body in and collapsed, but at least I took a step.
2013-Monet Vision, Main Bed
Cirsium Arvense, Thistle
Grape Hyacinth
Dandelion Puff Balls
White Iris
Lilly of the Valley beginning to bloom
My mind reeled with visions of work. Move the mums, split the wild geraniums, move the native hibiscus, trim the shrubs, dig out the five foot tall volunteer bush at the bird tower, move the day lilies into the sun, trim the shag bark birch, spray the dandelions, clean the leaves from the east side of the house, trim the Fallopia Japonica, cut back the shrubs along the east border, pull the weeds from the vegetable bed, and I haven’t even thought about buying any flowers yet. Oh my, what am I going to do? Take it one baby step at a time, that is what!
The first priority is to clean all maximum impact areas. What is a maximum impact area? Any flower bed that I can see from my chair at the kitchen table is a maximum impact area. There is an order of priority commencing from the chair, and progressing to the view standing at the kitchen window, to looking out the sunroom windows, to the bedroom windows, and finally, my neighbor’s view from his patio to the the far reaches of the yard.
Garden waste is always a problem for me. The village provides a pickup service, but I have to place the waste curbside in officially approved and tagged brown paper bags. That does not appeal to me at all. I prefer dumping garden waste into a pile beyond the lot line in the swamp. The EPA designation for swamp these days is “wetland.” Last year, the Wetlands Officer gave me a ticket for dumping evil grass clippings and dead dandelions on officially designated wetland property. The list of damage I subjected upon to the environment seemed endless. Further infractions of tossing horticultural matter into the swamp is punishable, and objectionable to the natural critters who consider the swamp their home.
When I finally came in, I went to my computer and googled NuWay Waste Disposal. That is the company that trucks our garbage and recyclables away. Eureka, they offer a yard waste disposal bin for a seasonal fee. The choice is to pay for the official brown bags, or for a handy waste container that gets picked up weekly. The Monet Vision produces a few square yards of horticultural matter every year, and the bin is a much more practical way to dispose of the waste. At least it is for me.
When the Frankfort Environmental Officer arrives to inspect my piece of the swamp, I will proudly point at my new garden waste bin and thumb my nose at him. Then, I will politely ask him what he will do to eradicate all the non-native thistle and doc migrating from his swamp into my horticultural masterpiece.
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Filed under: family, Garden, Gardening | Tagged: Claude Monet, Environment, EPA, Garden, Green waste, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Waste container, Waste management | Leave a comment »
