My Weeds

Fülszöveg

NOTE
Weeds used as major examples and illustrated for identification are ubiquitous in the North Temperate Zone, and in my gardens. They may nevertheless not all be in residence in your garden, and those that are may not be in this book. As long as your weed behaves the same way as my weed, it can be treated the same way. I have mentioned some weeds whose distribution is limited because they demonstrate a point, whether or not they pester gardeners. Most of them can be identified by using field guides. There is a very good chance that the common name I use is not the common name you use, or the common name that a field guide uses, or the common name a Canadian or a Britisher uses. No plants have as many aliases as weeds. For that reason I have included in the text the botanical names of important species when they are first mentioned. All mentioned weeds, important or incidental, are listed in appendices by common and botanical (Latinate) name.
A New Beginning
ANUARY is the... Tovább

Fülszöveg

NOTE
Weeds used as major examples and illustrated for identification are ubiquitous in the North Temperate Zone, and in my gardens. They may nevertheless not all be in residence in your garden, and those that are may not be in this book. As long as your weed behaves the same way as my weed, it can be treated the same way. I have mentioned some weeds whose distribution is limited because they demonstrate a point, whether or not they pester gardeners. Most of them can be identified by using field guides. There is a very good chance that the common name I use is not the common name you use, or the common name that a field guide uses, or the common name a Canadian or a Britisher uses. No plants have as many aliases as weeds. For that reason I have included in the text the botanical names of important species when they are first mentioned. All mentioned weeds, important or incidental, are listed in appendices by common and botanical (Latinate) name.
A New Beginning
ANUARY is the best time for gardeners. From the window of the y attic where I write, the gardens are bare to their bones, neat and clean, nicely edged, weed-free. They are an empty page on which to draw the garden of my dreams.
Last January I drew an azalea garden. Catalogs provided pigment: "subtle shades of peachy pink," "voluptuous pale pink and white with a touch of yellow in the throat," "a fascinating blend of peach flushed with pink plus a touch of gold in the throat." 1 pleasured myself among these crescendos of color for days, in an armchair, while the fire hissed and popped, and at times I could even smell the blossoms' catalog aromas— heliotrope and clove. I walked along a penciled path in the shade of my imagination. To either side rose banks of foliage and flowers among a grove of birch trees—little Robin Hill azaleas in white and stripes of lavender, knee-high Lorna with her Schiaparelli blossoms, silvery pink Sylphides level with my shoulders, and the great white rhododendron, County of York, standing six feet high with dark leaves dappled by the birch grove's winking shadow. I can see that garden still, if I close my eyes to reality.
Reality is skimpy infant azaleas hardly discernible among the lambsquarters, ragweed, and poke that have grown up around them.
I began this book because of this discrepancy: gardens grow weeds, but plans omit them, books don't mention them, photographs don't show them, and gardeners don't know much about them, although they spend as much time killing weeds as growing food and flowers. I didn't know much about weeds myself. I thought I knew something about plants in general, but it turned out that I had a lot to learn. As I learned, I weeded, and as I weeded with greater learning, I saw weeds in a different way. I don't mean that now I like them, except insofar as humans may, in being held hostage, come to see their captors as beloved enemies. But I have seen that gardeners have as peculiar a relationship with weeds as they have with the plants they intend to grow, that we Vissza