Saturday, May 21, 2011

Getting Grass Out of Ajuga or Good Grief, My Back is NOT a Pretzel!

It's not a fun task.  But if I want to keep my ajuga grass free (and I do!), I have to do it every spring. I did more bending yesterday than I have done in quite a few months. Here is a little spot of ajuga (a ground cover) with a few spikes of grass growing right in the middle.

The only way I know of to get it out is to brutally dig down and pop the ajuga clump right out of the ground.


Then I gently separate and shake the area where the grass is until I can grab the grass clump with all the roots and pull it out.  I always wear gloves to do this, but it was too difficult to wear gloves and snap a photo at the same time.

Once I pull out the grass, I lay the clump of ajuga back and move to the next section.


It's a very labor intensive job.

After a couple of hours of digging, cutting down and hauling loads of debris from the main gardens (halfway through I brought out my new BIG wheelbarrow),


I took a break from the hard work and puttered around with some garden accents.

I brought a blue chair out to the wagon wheel garden. While playing with a twig basket of kale and some colorful orbs, I got an up-close  view of my fully opened tulips.




Speaking of tulips, look at this one from the rockwall garden. Have you ever seen anything like it?


I don't know where the paint brush-like stripe of red came from.

I brought the cordyline out to get used to the sunlight. It gave me something of interest to rest my eyes on as I was cleaning out the beds near the road.

Later in the afternoon DH power washed the deck (I helped a little. It's a fun job and he likes to do it, so he only let me do  a few sections). 


He also power washed the metal table/chairs. Now there's some patina!
 Since he hogged all the power-washing fun, I decided to paint some birdhouse garden accents in bumblebee colors. 
 
All in all I had a very active day -- even cooked a pork roast with dressing (well, just Stovetop) for dinner. I was pretty tired at the end of it all and went to bed early (thus I am up at 4:00 a.m. making this post.) I thought for sure I would have very sore muscles this morning.   I am thrilled to report that I do not.  So I can go at it full force again today.  I love when my garden mojo returns!

There is still plenty to do, the worst of which is solid staining all that white lattice and deck railing. HATE that job!

8 comments:

  1. Send me some of your gardening MOJO please!
    Balisha

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  2. So happy you got by without sore muscles but look out..it could still come.
    That is a lot of back breaking work. Glad you had some color to feast your eye on. The tulip with a bit of red looks amazing!

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  3. It's a good soreness though. Love your wagon wheel area!

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  4. I have to do the same thing with my strawberries. The grass seems to grow right on top of and through the strawberries roots.

    Why is it that the grass will spread so aggressively in my garden, but leave bare patches on my lawn?

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  5. I love ajuga...everything is looking great Zoey...don't work too hard...

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  6. You have a beautiful garden and some great plants. I enjoyed reading your blog posts. Feel free to drop by my wee Irish garden blog. Kellli

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  7. I'm having a terrible time making a comment here. I usually have to click post comment several times before the secret lettering comes up. Anyway...good for you for doing all the hard work. I set you an email saying I hope you were doing what you wanted.
    Love the blue chair arrangement too-clever combo.
    My brother just bought a power washer too.

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  8. Zoey your wagon wheel bed looks so pretty with the chair in it. Makes a beautiful display. That is the strangest thing about that tulip. It looks pretty with the red stripe.

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