Creeping Charlie Chapter 13

 

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 spraying last night, and I’m pretty sure I heard one of the plants burp, and another one laugh derisively.

The lawn companies can deal with Charlie, but they’re almost as bad.  They just keep showing up, no matter how many times you ask them to stop.  I may give in to get their help, much as the U.S. needed the help of the Soviet Union to stop Hitler.

Looking up cures for Creeping Charlie, I saw that boron is a chemical that works well… and it’s just a mineral that comes out of the ground, so how bad can it be?  Well, if you don’t get the mixture of boron and water just right, you kill your whole lawn, and the soil becomes toxic.  Not a good plan.

A few years ago I saw some homeowners in the area use Round-up on their whole lawn, and then re-plant it.  In retrospect, my guess is that they had Creeping Charlie, because that seems to be the only way to kill it.  But, at our house, we’re surrounded by fields and ditches, all of which have the evil Charlie growing, waiting for that new lawn to be planted so they can infiltrate once again.

I sometimes laugh at sports fishermen because they have a battle of wits with a fish.  Well, here I am having my summer ruined by a plant, which has far less intelligence than a fish… at least, as far as we can tell.

People say the best time to kill Charlie is in early spring, and after the first hard frost in the fall.  I got rid of a little of it in April, but it’s always so rainy that it doesn’t seem to pay.  But come this fall, I’ll be waiting, sprayer loaded and ready to go.  After that first hard frost, you’ll see me outside, shivering, and mumbling psychotically, “Kill the Creeping Charlie…kill the Creeping Charlie…”

Then, it will be gone, and I’ll be in a nice “rest home” someplace, hallucinating about Creeping Charlie, and hearing its sarcastic little voice saying, “I’ll be back!”