GuardNGuy.blogspot.com

  You know how horror movies like “Friday the 13 th ” seem to keep piling up sequels that have the same basic plot?   Well, my yard is a horror story, and the bad guy in my movie is a dastardly fellow known as Creeping Charlie.   This may not be the 13 th time I’ve written about Charlie, but I’m sure there will be 13 before it, or I, am gone. Charlie sounds friendly enough.   Everybody I’ve ever known named Charlie was friendly.   And creeping doesn’t sound so bad.   Babies creep before they crawl, right? This Creeping Charlie is a lawn weed.   It is a relative of the mint family, and it doesn’t creep: it dashes.   It is like a lawn vine that silently takes over, eliminating grass and clover and anything else in its way.   I’m not sure, but I think it got a cat, once. The thing about this weed is that it doesn’t really respond well to attempts to kill it.   A dandelion will crumple up and die when the words “Weed B Gone” are uttered.   Creeping Charlie doesn’t care.   I was spra

My lovely and charming wife has been setting family records for food preservation this summer.  In  recent years -- make that decades -- this time of year has been too busy for her to commit the time needed to can, freeze, dry, or pickle things.  So, I think she's making up for lost time.  Or thyme.  Or something. Here's something we figured out: if you're freezing things, it really pays to put individual meal quantities into a small sealed bag, and put those bags inside a gallon size freezer bag.  It takes away the "freezer taste" that frozen vegetables can get. There are only two of us at home now, so in many cases freezing makes more sense than canning, but she's done that too.  We haven't gotten the dehydrator out yet, but I'm sure we will. She's also become fond of fermenting things.  Yogurt is fermented, as is sauerkraut and a bunch of other food.  It is said to be good for us, which it probably is.  There is some art that goes with the scien

  (From August of 2000) After the Friday night/Saturday morning downpour, it was finally dry enough Sunday afternoon to do a little catching up with the garden work.   It was hot and humid, but there is certainly no better time to weed than after a big rain. There was an interesting little ecosystem in operation in our garden.   The usual bugs were there to eat the plants.   Toads and frogs were hopping around, looking for bugs to eat.   A snake surprised us, and we him.   He was looking for toads and frogs.   The only thing missing was an eagle to pick up the snake.   I wish there was something to eat the rabbits that have been nibbling on things.   I wouldn't want to be around when it happened, but I'd just as soon not have those rabbits around.   The "No Rabbit" signs haven't done any good at all. Weeding a garden is not anybody's favorite job, I don't think.   I enjoy doing a little of it, but the problem is that it tends to be addictive, because

I don't know if it is racist or xenophobic to call Japanese beetles "Japanese" beetles, but since that's what they're called, I guess it's okay. Have you had Japanese beetles in your yard and garden?  They are a wonder to behold. Bigger than a lady bug, (by which I mean not to be sexist, but again, that's what they're called), Japanese beetles have a beautiful gold metallic sheen to their wings.  They emerge in early July in t he area where I live, and spend most of their time in the soil as grubs, eating the roots of people's lawns. Once they emerge they are ravenous little buggers (by which I mean bugs).  They can virtually denude (by which I am not meaning to be titilating, by which I'm not meaning to do it again) a modest sized fruit tree, such as my bing cherry tree, grape leaves, raspberry leaves, etc. Somehow they manage to eat the green part of the leaves but not the tiny veins, making beautiful little, dead, works of art. I planted a l

It's mid-August in Southern Wisconsin.  The sweet corn is done.  And, as a bonus, this year we didn't have to share any with deer or raccoons or skunks!  We've done a pretty good job keeping up with the produce that we're producing.  The flowers are flowering, and the weeds are less out of control than usual. Around this time I've heard that organized gardeners are planting some things as fall crops.  Carrots, peas, kohlrabi, spinach, salad mix... It seems like a really good idea.  Unfortunately, by the time mid-August comes around there isn't too much gas left in the gardening tank. In my dreams, not only do we have some nice second-planting to harvest in early-October, but also all the beds will have been cleaned up, supplemented with composts and manure, and ready for spring. Over the years my work and travel schedule have wrecked havoc with fall gardening plans.  That and watching television and doing things that are not gardening related. The problem with t

(From 1999)  I’m not one of those people who talks to plants.  I like plants just fine, but I think they should be talking to each other -- chatting about root rot, or pollination, or whatever.  I have nothing to say to them.  At least, not to most of them.  I do have a few choice words for a specific kind of plant: my enemy, my nemesis, and my curse: Creeping Charlie. Creeping Charlie is a distant relative of the mint family, known for their gum.  Creeping Charlie has a Latin name, but nobody I know cares what it is.  I have some special names for Creeping Charlie, but this is a family oriented newspaper, so I will keep them to myself.  Here’s what Creeping Charlie does: it takes over your lawn.  It’s like some sort of insidious lawn-rash that spreads until there is no lawn left. From a distance you can’t really notice Creeping Charlie, because it, like grass, is green.   And, to its credit, it does have some pretty flowers in the late spring.   Some people might even like the

 (This is from 1998) We are not the world’s best gardeners.   We do okay, but not everything we plant grows, and rabbits eat some, and the weeds often get the best of us.   Our tomato plants are unkempt, and the chances of us actually eating any melons from our garden are about one in five, judging from past years. This year, thanks to El Nino, mulch, and weeding, our garden is better than ever.   Almost everything looks good.   But, something strange is going on with the popcorn. To put our popcorn situation in context, (and how many families even have a popcorn situation) you would have had to see our popcorn crop last year.   The harvest consisted of approximately one-half cup of popcorn (not an exaggeration) which didn’t actually pop.   For anyone who wants to achieve this level of popcorn failure, I suggest following these steps: 1.   Use old seeds, 2. Don’t work up the soil very well, 3. Don’t weed or cultivate those few seeds that actually germinate. So, this year I decide

One of my favorite sayings is, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”  According to Wikipedia, a sometimes reliable source, the saying is attributed to ” Saint Bernard of Clairvaux who wrote, " L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs " (hell is full of good wishes and desires).” I think the reason I like that saying so much is that it applies to much in my life.  My intentions are always heart-felt, and yet often not acted upon.  I’ve paved more roads than Democrat counties after the stimulus bill. One good intention for the summer was to keep up with the weeds in the gardens.  And, for quite a while I was successful.  Then it got really hot, and I got frustrated with not being able to see, due to the steady stream of sweat that smeared over my glasses. Then the invasion of mosquitoes began, and, well, you know.  I don’t hate many things in life, but mosquitoes rise to that level of dislike.  I have to admit, though, that my general laziness was a f

The unusually warm weather we’ve had recently has been a real treat.  Farmers who couldn’t do the field work they wanted to do last fall because of the rain that turned too quickly into snow were able to play catch-up, and a lot of fields are ready to plant ahead of schedule, and some planting has already been done. Because we live in Wisconsin, most of us feel like there is a shoe left to drop, and that shoe will take the form of a blizzard, complete with a few feet of snow and below zero temperatures.  There is no meteorological basis for this expectation, just a feeling that something good is usually followed by something bad when it comes to weather. I think people in the Midwest see the world that way more than other folks.  On a perfect day in June, you’ll hear people say, “we’re gonna pay for this later!”  I’ve never heard people in San Diego make the same prediction. Well, I may pay for it later, but last weekend I got a start planting our garden.  Most years we don’t get th

  Loam Sweet Loam -- Written About a Late Fall Day.   I realized some time ago that my hobbies turn out to be nothing but different kinds of work. In addition to my regular job, I enjoy teaching, free lance writing (such as this) and gardening. Yes, gardening can be relaxing, but there is a lot of work to it, especially if you have a large garden. As with every other year, our garden looked great in May, very good in June, okay into July, but awful in August, and embarrassing by September. Weeds are amazing, and it’s hard not to admire their determination to live long enough to reproduce. Some anthropologists say at some level, that’s all any of us are really trying to do, but people can’t match weeds for their success. Last weekend was the beginning of the end of the gardening season. It’s been longer than most this year, due to a temperate October. It was nice to go out to the garden and pick some tomatoes or peppers in late October. But, the hard freezes put an end to that, and all