The Most Horrible Weeds: Before and After Weeding Photos

Gargantuan Weeds Choke the Dead Peach Tree

“Why, oh why, are the weeds so incredibly much more horrible this year?” I wondered to myself. “Am I just getting older? Do they just SEEM worse?”

OH YEAH. THE DRIP SYSTEM.

These weeds have been thriving on drip system water, and have put down Hellish roots and have TAKEN OVER.

The WORST area is by my dead Peach Tree and “Rosebush”. Well, underneath all of the EVIL Morning Glory, there still IS a rosebush, but I haven’t seen it since March. I really should do a post on EVIL Morning glory, because it really is an incredible plant, flower and FOE.

P*L*U*S, there is this very Unfortunate House in my neighborhood that CLEARLY was landscaped by a Yankee Transplant (Not that I have anything against them), and they just didn’t know what they were getting into, with the year-round growing season here and the EVIL Morning GLory. Oh my Lord. Their backyard (which is visible from the street), well, it looks like they just had a nervous breakdown and gave up, the EVIL Moring GLory has completely taken over and is growing like Kudzu all up into the trees, having already overgrown all the shrubs and flowers and lawn furniture and the water feature and the gardening shed. I really should get you a picture!

There is ANOTHER house in my neighborhood too, that had this problem in years past, and although they have cleared most of it out, it is still a pitched battle.

Every winter I pull up every vestige of EVIL Morning Glory on my property, and every spring it comes back and grows its Transatlantic cables throughout the entire yard and up under the eaves and INTO the HOUSE and UNDER the HOUSE and UP the Night Blooming Jasmine (which is probably my favorite plant in my whole yard), trying to kill it.

Behold The EVILLL!!!!

Why do I let it grow at all? Well, it is PART hubris; I think I can mange it (and I always fail). Also, the flowers are really, really, REALLY pretty. Not as pretty as GOOD Morning Glory, but close. Good Morning Glory is the annual kind, you have to plant it from seed every spring, and it canNOT take the heat. I think it is called “Heavenly Blue” (the variety) and it IS Heavenly.

EVIL Morning GLory is Perreniel: Plant it once and suffer forever. It L*O*V*ES the heat. The flowers tend closer to purple than the annual Morning Glory. Like a Stephen King novel plant, it will envelope you and grow all over you and strangle you as you sit in your lawn furniture. It will tear your house down if you let it.

So, In these weeding photos, you will see the “rosebush” in the background, with it’s mantle of EVIL Morning Glory. Let the WEDDING BEGIN!

You can SEE the “Rosebush” in the far Left. See the leaves? Evil Morning Glory Leaves.

Long View of Weedy Area with the Beginnings of Weeding in the upper right

Half Weeded!

A Closer Look at the Fine Weeding Job that included digging up Sweet Potato sized Four O' Clock Tubers

All Planted Up with Cabbages, Kale, and Lettuce

Let the Weeding Begin!! September Gardening Series #2

Sad-Ass Sorrel plants, shrunken like Shrunken Heads to 1/40th their normal size by Heat and Drought

Because NO ONE CARES about my weeding progress or even my gardening except YOU, my DARLING READERS, I shall be documenting my painstakingly slow, arduous, sweaty progress from “Weed Kingdom” to “Ready for Planting”. I have, roughly, what might be described as 22 beds: some are HUGE (Hi Stella!) and some are tiny (the mailbox bed), but my general plan for September is to weed, fiddle with the drip system, turn the soil over with the shovel, and maybe even possibly add compost to ONE BED A DAY, and then, by the end of Septemeber, I ought to be READY FOR PLANTING!

Of course, nothing ever goes as planned, and life is uncertain, but that is the GENERAL PLAN. In order to get Ahead of Life’s curveballs, I plan, when possible, to do MORE than one bed a day. That way, when I absolutely can NOT do it for whatever reason (like if it is raining (HA HA HA HA HAH !!!) Oh, I slay myself) or Cramps, or getting thrown in jail) I won’t have Blown the Whole System.

Bed #1: BEFORE, pictured with weeding trowels in the foreground

Bed #1 AFTER!!!!

But in spite of my Bitter, bitter rain joke in the last paragraph, I am planning on a rainy rainy fall, because I believe it will be a rainy fall. I believe it so much that I am going to try to plant EARLY, rather than late, so that the tiny Plantios are somewhat established before the bottom drops out and the flooding begins. I feel it in my bones that planting early is going to be the only hope for a productive garden this fall/winter.

A Selection of Allums discovered to be lingering among the weeds of Bed #1

My Cats L*O*V*E the smell of onions, and want to transform them into playthings IMMEDIATELY

Bed #2: Weeds and 4 Thai Pepper Plants

AFTER! Bed #2, with only the Peppers Remaining

Bed #3, which I did all Extra! YAY

106˚ Summer

St Francis among the Dead Artichokes: This is what 67 days over a hundred Degrees will do to your Artichokes!

It struck me, when I was writing about how our Central Texas “fallow Season” is SUMMER, because it is too HOT for things to grow, how much my garden looks like it is enduring the first blasts of WINTER, when actually, it was the 67 days over a hundred (and I don’t even want to know how many over a hundred and FIVE) that created this wasteland.

Dead Peach Tree

I think anyone looking at these photos would just assume that they are November pictures, not August ones. Although I DID crop them to remove the brilliant greens of the Pernicious Weeds. I have to give thanks for Pernicious Weeds this year, actually: without the Pernicious Weeds, my soil would have blown away and there would be no oxygen either, because they are the only ones who can take it.

Dead Peach Tree featuring the Pernicious Weeds: "Stephen King" "choke the life out of everything on Earth" Morning Glory and "Has Been Cut Down 22 Times" Hackberry Tree

BEHOLD THE PERNICIOUS WEEDS IN ALL THEIR GLORY!!

Bermuda Grass, St. Augustine Grass, Sticker Plants, Nutgrass, Fake Poinsetta Weeds, choking out dying heirloom tomato plants that never bore, due to extreme heat and spider mites