I adore my herb garden. It’s twenty years old, and shows signs of wear and tear, but I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to work with plants that smell so wonderful, and to be able to incorporate them into a raised bed with native flowers.
The only difficulty with this garden is that we never completed the walkways. Originally, we intended to lay brick in the pathways, but we’ve just never gotten around to completing the chore. Each year, at least three times during the growing season, I’ve had to weed the walkways. The herbs, as well as weeds seem to like the ground up limestone (chat) as a growing medium. When the chat is dry, it’s impossible to weed. I can’t figure out how the plants can grow in it. When it’s rained, the chat is a breeze to weed.
I spent about two hours, two days in a row, and this was the result:
The “after” picture looks SO nice that you can see why I want to keep those walkways clean.
Below is the “Before” picture for the other half of the job. My garden helper left some plants in the walkway two weeks ago, so it looks worse than usual, but you can see what the rains have done for the weeds and volunteers.
If we don’t have rain in the next two days, I’ll be watering the path so that I can rip out all the volunteers and clean things up.
Arrrgh!!!
It's just my state of mind!
Buffy–Just as the cobbler’s kids have no shoes, the masonry company owners have no brick walkways. On the bright side, your brown-eyed susan, clematis, and herbs look wonderful!
buffy you have an amazing herb garden!
LOL! Cop Car, you got it in one! Of course, that must be why we have never finished the project. I’ll just have to measure the walkway, choose the bricks and have them delivered. What better way to get a project finished than to do it yourself??
Thanks for the kind words about the garden.
Bod, it IS amazing, isn’t it? My favorite view of it is early in the morning in May, when the sun is just beginning to light it, and you can still see the dew. Everything looks lush and full, and we haven’t gotten to the stage where I have to water and prune it yet. This is the year I vow to make better use of all that abundance!
Take two advil and put your feet up! Sheesh!!! It’s beautiful!
Says the woman (Frankie) who is blogging about creating a waterfall and gardens in her back yard! Get the massage….you’ll need it!
Very nice! It is amazing what a weeding will do for the look of the walways. Most of my pathways have been planted with creeping thyme, phlox and a tiny yellow sedum (yes, I believe the very stuff that Cop Car cannot keep control of).
The pathway plants get overrun by grasses and various weeds, and look much better after I’ve spent some attention to them.
Thanks, Bogie!
I bet your walkways smell heavenly, and you probably have less weeding to do than I do. I’d like to let the thyme and lambs ears that grow in my walkways now, try to set roots down in between the bricks that I hope to add. I’ll still have weeding to do, but a lot less of it, and I like the looks of the plants straying their bounds.
It must make Cop Car grit her teeth to think about that tiny yellow seedum making itself at home in your walkways! lol
Buffy–No teeth gritting, here. Each plant is useful – somewhere! Here, I find the yellow sedum having taken root and flourished under my (non-producing) tomato plants, in beds of other (less invasive) varieties of sedum, in strawberry beds….You get the picture. The yellow sedum is the only sedum that seems to like our climate enough to rapidly invade the environs.
Bogie–Did you go out and buy the stuff or did it come with the irises that made the journey from KS to NH?
(laughing) Cop Car, I knew that would get you to post! Of course, I know that little seedum isn’t enough to make you truly irritated. It was just funny to find that the two of you have such different opinions on the one plant.
I have a couple of types of weeds that just think the gardens at Chez Buffy are wonderful. I haven’t bothered yet to look them up, but I know that I’m not the only person in this area who is irritated by their envasions. The only thing you can do is weed, weed, weed, and that doesn’t seem to be as much fun as it once was.
Why aren’t your tomato plants producing? Is it too warm? Too dry?
Buffy–The tomato vines are a mystery. Only one plant has really grown. It has been blooming (few blossoms, but blooming) for at least four or five weeks. The very few (three or four) tomatoes have not ripened. I’m thinking that our nights haven’t been cool enough; but, what do I know?!!!!