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!