Monday, June 25, 2012

Transplanting by Margaret Ullrich, part 1

Things have gotten a bit busy.
Nothing major, just stuff.
Stuff like gardening.

We don't have a huge garden.
Food: five rhubarbs, eight tomatoes and two zucchini.
Flowers: irises, lilacs, alyssums, bleeding hearts, lilies and daisies.
A grapevine provides shade over our kitchen window.
The branches from a chokecherry Paul had trained into a tree provides more shade.
Grass and white nancies provide ground cover.
A few perennials - some I planted, some planted themselves - complete the decor. 


Oh... and I have chives.

If you are starting a garden and someone gives you a package of chive seeds, please, please, toss them.
The chive seeds, I mean.
I know, I know... they look pretty.
Pretty purple ball-shaped flowers on slender green stems.
They'd look lovely, waving in the breeze in Spring.
And it would be handy to have some onions in the garden.
What's the harm in planting a few seeds?

DON'T DO IT!

Those pretty little purple balls are seed bombs.
After a couple of years you'll be finding chives everywhere.
They're worse than fleas at sneaking into any bare spot. 
Chives are vicious little squatters.
They'll be trying to choke anything else you'd like to have in the garden.

Today I decided to get rid of them.
It took me three hours.
The slender chive stalks were just the tips of the icebergs.
The root balls were huge.
I had to dig them out with a long-handled shovel.
My composter smells like a vat of onion soup. 
Maybe next year it'll only take me one hour to get rid of the new crop.
I know I'll have to do it again.

One thing about being over 60 - sometimes it feels like I'm living in an eternal rerun.

June 25, 2012 - I was weeding my garden.

June 25, 1972 - I was weeding everything I owned.
Paul and I were getting ready to leave America.
We were living in an 8 by 11 foot trailer.
It was so cute.
The dinette set converted into a double bed.
It even had a toilet.
What it didn't have was enough room for all our stuff.

You'd be surprised at how much stuff two recent college graduates could have.


I'd kept a travel diary for our trip across the continent.
I started it on June 25, 1972.
It was a rainy Sunday in College Point, Queens, New York.
We'd had a family dinner with both sets of parents at Ma's house.
After Paul's parents left, we went back to packing.

Packed almost everything in every available spot.  Not safe for traveling, though.  
Hope we get done by tomorrow.

June 25.
Weeding stuff. 
Weeding chives.
I'm in a rut.

Don't ask how much junk we've got after 40 years of marriage.
About the chives...  You've been warned.

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