Weeding rewards

  Yesterday we had a good soaking rain, most of the day.  It made the  perfect situation for attacking the thistles and noxious weeds that permeate my yard.  So, after canning apple-pie-in-a-bottle during the morning hours I donned my gloves, grabbed my wheeled garden stool, my root digger and headed out, pulling the wagon to serve as my trash collector.   We are not talking dandelions. I am after snarling, evil, menacing green stuff
   First was the garden area where there have been two tall thistles, firmly imbedded in my spearmint, along with a burdock that I fight yearly.  These thistles are a fairly recent variety to my yard, painfully barbed, with a sting that lasts and lasts.  I need to look in my noxious weed pamphlet to see what their name truly is.  What I call them is not fit for a blog!  They came out easily, provided I pulled from the base.  The burdock was more tenacious, as I knew it would be.  Roots are still there but I did manage to bust if off low down and toss it over the fence.  This plant and I are enemies from the past---it chose to grow just underneath the back wooden fence, backed up by a pile of oil drums.  I innocently placed my large, heavy containers just in front of that fence.  Thus, every year we have a struggle, even the Roundup treatment has been insufficient to totally discourage this weed of weeds!
    I love my good leather gloves.   When I first started into the art of weeding some 50 years past I bought myself a good pair of leather gloves, none of those flimsy gardening gloves for me.  The attitude is probably another evidence of my growing up years. There are lots of instances in my life as a farm wife where gloves that are worth something are needed!  Leather makes it possible for me to dislodge thistles, minus shovels, if the dirt is just right, and today it was.  Not only did I get those in my spearmint, but I went all around my yard fence ( we have a big yard) and also around the foundation of the house, and around the root of every tree in the yard.  It seemed that thistles of one description or another were trying their best to get a good start.
    Of course I didn't just pull the thorny variety.  I felt great when up came button/marshmallow weeds with their long roots, one after another. One root system was over a foot long!  Not all came zipping right out, my little digger had to help dislodge some roots after my yanking had broken off the greenery.  Either way I felt exultant!  Even those roots that refused to budge did not mar the hours spent. Weeding can be rewarding, not my favorite task, but one that is necessary.
      All thorny plants came up---Milk weed, Russian, Canadian, whatever their ethnicity. There are with some nice velvety leaves. I always wonder why these plants have such attractive flowers,  lavender, yellow, white, with glossy curling leaves, yet with such blackened hearts.
      Guess weeds are much like other things in life.   Enticing on the outside, tempting in beauty.  But if they can get their hooks into you, pain might be inflicted that lasts, and lasts, until we get someone to help pull out the barbs and make it better.

Border crossers

About a month ago I wrote thoughts about our mourning dove.  I have received new light on this subject, not sure about its authenticity.  Recently when we were enjoying the sounds of this dove  I made some off-hand comment about the call being a tad different from most of our mourning doves.  My husband responded that he had heard this might be a slightly different breed of dove---not one found in our North American Wildlife book that I use often for identifying such things.  He elaborated that south of the border, in Mexico, the doves there were over-populated and that their call was a little different from those to which we were accustomed.
       I listened to this, noting that his expression was serious, knowledgeable, etc.  Inside my head, I was thinking that the birds are crossing the Rio Grande just as the citizens, for a better life.  I was also inwardly smiling.  Hmmm, maybe our dove just has a Spanish accent.  Hola or hello, works for me!  Still love to know the bird likes our neighborhood.