The Lie and The Truth

"Tiffany" Rose whose fragrance is beyond the beauty
of the flower itself.  This is for the "blog world."

We bloggers lie.  Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help your garden spade?  Well. . .ah, sure, a-huh.  Yep.  But with our camera's we show only what we want the world to see--of ourselves and of our gardens.  There's nothing right or wrong about this; there's just more than what meets the eye of the reader.

Here's the real picture.  My lovely rose bush surrounded
by invasive "horsetail"

While the Things I get to do today take me to abject despair and then from this dark place back to hope again, I thought I would air the dirty laundry, show you what's in the closet, but really just add a picture of part of my front yard.

Where is that lovely rose now?  Hint--top left.
 This is my view without the editing help of the camera.

Since life is just an experiment--that word has been included two or three times a week lately--my despair over the horsetail that is taking over my front yard has moved from the depths back to a place of hope. One of the on-line sources commented that none of the weed killers on the market (and I won't use them anyway) will really stop horsetail, but that it thrives in poor soil. Nitrogen rich soil is toxic to it.  I brightened immediately as I heard my mother caution me about using chicken "litter" in the garden,  "Be careful.  It will burn the plants!"  Wow! So I could pull/dig the horsetail and seriously amend the soil with chicken poo and eventually stop the horsetail.

Gravel path green with newly sprouted horsetail.
It was all clean last week.

A vision of my pull up the bushy, tufted weed and then immediately holding a chicken over the spot and squeezing it until the soil was "amended" plopped into my mind.

Wish me well with this experiment.

Bolt Salad

I eat some pretty strange things.  My family can tell you that's true.  They tend to be more than a little suspicious of things I collect from the yard to eat.

Creamy blossom and bronze buds of bolted arugula

I love most greens, especially the spring, tender ones. Experimenting with new plants and eating different parts of the plant are Things I get to do today before dinner.  In the past I've been known to make salad entirely from weeds from between the rows, not lettuces in the rows.

Arugula is a hardy green by most standards. It sprouts up fast even in wet, cold weather. It refuses to die back in the fall when frost flattens most of the rest of the garden. And now (it's a biennial), it has bolted, getting ready to make seeds for the next time around. The blossoms have four, leggy petals in creamy yellow. I'm sure they are good to eat.

Tossed with rosemary olive oil, white balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.

So I collected flowers and leaves for our salad. Romaine, chard and sorrel were the other players.  It was delicious.  FYI: the flowers are sweet and fragrant tasting, not peppery like the leaves.