I’m proposing a name change to The Oxalis Bed. Well, one of them. I have been fighting with this Oxalis Bed for almost a year and I feel like I’m starting to win. Maybe. When we moved in it was full of overgrown, grassy weeds, thistles, old roses and weedmat. After a grand effort clearing everything out of it, I was rewarded by the scoffing army of oxalis weeds. It took three rounds of weed killer to knock them back, over the space of a few months. I thought they had retreated. Silly Twiglet. Spring arrived, bright and cherry, and the oxalis returned to mock me. I don’t want to spray the bed anymore since I’ve already started planting things in it. So I’m reduced to carefully prising the oxalis out of the soil, trying not to spread the wee bulbs of terror everywhere.
After a recent weeding session, I decided to put down some mulch. I had used bags of ‘horse poop’ from a source near work to mulch one of my other ornamental garden beds, as they turned out to contain mostly sawdust and straw. As I emptied the first bag of poop into the not-for-much-longer Oxalis Bed, what tumbled out was actually mostly poop. Pretty fresh poop. Oh, poop. I figured I might as well just empty the other two bags in and dig it into the soil, even though that might compound my weed problem. But I’ll be ready. The other downside is that I think I’m currently the scourge of the neighbourhood for the aroma of poop that is wafting around. Oops. We can just pretend we’re in the countryside. Anyway, the soil did need some food…
The reason I wanted to hurry up and get this done was so I could put the rocks back in the garden. They had been squatting all over the front steps, side steps and outdoor table and seats since I took them out to spray the oxalis, some months ago. I got quite a good workout session moving the rocks around. The garden IS my gym! I tried not to put the rocks in the way of the bluebell and snowflake bulbs, which have died down until next spring. Now I just need to get a few more plants to put in there. And I might hide from the neighbours for a little while…
I think I will henceforth call this garden bed The Rock Garden.
Wild Hope Homestead 