Garden smarden

Before it started to lightly rain this morning, I have to confess that I committed astericide. 

I dug out about one-quarter of the proliferative New England asters from the back yard. This mess all started 10 years ago, when I took one stalk of flower from the railroad tracks and put it in my yard.  I was a fool.

The soil was soft, and they came out easily, unlike the last time I did this five years ago.  I almost broke the shovel then—the soil was hard, dry and the roots intractable.  I might have done some swearing.

Today, Tiny Dog and George watched me from the porch as I dug, banged the roots against the ground to remove the extra dirt and hauled the plants to the growing pile.  If sat down to rest, the girls would come off the porch and sit on my lap.  Tiny Dog licked and licked my face, and George nudged my hand with her nose. Wren went inside to sleep on the duvet; she prefers couch comfort to worrying about me flinging dirt, making noise, and yielding a shovel, all super scary stuff to her.

I replaced a few of the asters with a present from a friend’s garden: iris, their own kind of beautiful spreading malevolence.  And now grackles are flocking to the dirt, to pick out fresh, fat worms. Happy spring to you.

And here’s a picture that proves it was winter here earlier, all three the little monsters snuggling in front of the heat vent.