Wine Weeder

“I never get to be Wine Weeder!”, Bebe complained one day, on the way home from preschool. My first thought was, you probably will be when you grow up, it runs in the family. But after a few questions, I understood what she wanted to be was the all-important Line Leader.

I’m the Wine Weeder. My Dad was the Whiskey Weeder. The family tradition is that the cocktail hour is conducted in the garden, on hands and knees, not because of over-imbibing, but because pulling weeds while sipping is so relaxing and satisfying. You haven’t lived ‘til you’ve seen a bunch of preppies in plaid plants, drinking G+Ts, crawling around the perennials.

When my Mom noticed we were running low on glassware in the house, she would tour the yard, collecting stray glasses from various flower beds, flinging drowned slugs from the dregs.

I highly recommend wine weeding. It’s a chore and its own reward in one. The garden is at its prettiest in the early evening. It’s peaceful and cool. The children won’t interrupt for fear of being enlisted to help.

Note to gardening moms; a game of Alien Invaders can keep a small weeder focused. The desirable plants are the natives, the weeds are Alien Invaders. Use laser gun sound effects with each alien destroyed. Lots more fun than straight weeding, same goal accomplished.

Certain beverages lend or emphatically do not lend themselves to specific garden tasks. Pruning and Zombies don’t mix; digits could be severed. Beer should be saved until hoeing is done, else lettuces may be decapitated. No alcohol should ever be involved with trimming raspberry canes. Irish coffee and leaf raking, however are a match made in heaven; a caffeine buzz boosts your raking energy and the whiskey intensifies the autumn color and the crisp sound of the leaves. And wine weeding is ideal; late warm spring afternoons with the taste of Picpoule de Pinet mingling with the wafting purple scent if the lilacs, makes total annihilation of all invasives seems less urgent than simply plucking a few dandelions from the creeping jenny.

There is, in fact a perfect beverage for each garden task. For example:

Harvesting pumpkins - armangac
Transplanting basil seedlings - negroni (campari, gin and vermouth)
Mowing lawn - lemonade
Edging beds - Red Bull
Deadheading annuals - mint julep
Planting vegetable seeds - V8
Step stone resetting - ice coffee
Snow shoveling - hot cocoa
Pinching back chrysanthemums - kir
Hosing off aphids - Pelligrino
Planting herbs - May wine (white wine steeped with sweet woodruff)
Gathering roses - mimosa

See? You try one. Maybe you are a Wine Weeder.

Easest Annuals

Mothers Day in Massachusetts is the best time to put annual seeds in the ground. When the tulip bed is dropping petals, I poke a lot of cosmos seeds in around them. By the time the tulip foliage is yellow and ready to pluck out, the cosmos are well begun, and I fill in any bare spots with more seed. I keep them moist for about 10 days. Once started, cosmos need almost no water, and unless we go 2 weeks without a drop of rain, I ignore them all summer, and am rewarded with cheerful orange flowers from July until mid October. Then the children harvest the spiky seed heads for next year's crop.

Flowers (no deadheading, low water) All of these like full sun.
Cosmos; orange, red, yellow, white or pink
California poppy; orange
Small daisy style Zinnias; all the warm colors
Nicotiana; red, pink, white or lavender
Nasturtiums; orange, red, yellow, white or pink

Foliage; good color for shady spots. Last year I put a lot of red coleus in a shady bed where I usually have impatiens. Much more bang for the buck, and less watering.
Coleus; fab foliage stunning colors
Sweet potato vine; black or chartreuse

There's Just Two Things That Money Can't Buy, and That's True Love and Home Grown Tomatoes

Tomatoes you MUST grow;
1. Sun Gold - an orange cherry, prolific, tangy sweet, even beats Sweet 100
2. Brandywine - complex, meaty, for sublime BLTs
3. Green Zebra - not only pretty, great acidity, the best for salads
4. Big Beef - not quite as spectacular as Brandywine, but earlier and more prolific
5. Black Krim - exotic intense flavor

Optional;
Early Girl - reliable, prolific, unexciting but very good

Virtual Before and After

The Before and "After" pictures shown here are Photoshop collages. They show how the completed plantings will look, choices can be made on the computer screen before spending on material and labor. I photograph each house and yard from several points of view, so we can choose areas to best concentrate on. Then I collage in plants and hardscape. The homeowners and I go over plans and collages together to make adjustments.
Many of my clients want to do a lot of the work themselves, and would just like advice or coaching. It’s nice to have another opinion. Often I will do a complete property plan, and the client will implement it in manageable pieces, over time. Or they might want some overgrown shrubs artistically pruned, and plant flowers themselves.

True Green Confession

Neglected plants call eloquently to me. If I'm a guest in someone's home, I find myself sticking my finger into the houseplants to check for over/under watering, removing dead leaves, pinching tips. When I walk the dog, I mentally relandscape each house I pass. I keep pruners in my glove box for rescue missions. I get this from my father. One time, when he and I were looking at colleges for me, walking around a campus, he began to pull weeds from a bed of leucothoe 8 feet deep and 40 or 50 feet long. Then, I dragged him away; today I would probably start at the other end and meet him in the middle.