jinian | garden: undaunted with a side of chips

One would think that wearing a t-shirt and a fully buttoned flannel shirt over it would mean that bits of dirt could not fly into one's undergarments and lodge there, but one would be wrong.

I've been clearing a bed by the roses against the shed in back, though my allergies have gotten bad enough that I can only go out for an hour or two a day. It'll eventually be the home for the foxgloves from the pea patch, some garlic, all the lavenders, and the wolfsbane I'm going to get from

lirrin. First, though, the clearing, which is particularly difficult around the bases of the roses. Whoever planted them stuck some very close together, and it's hard to dig near any of the grafts without hitting roots, so some bits of matted grass are just going to have to stay there. The area's also full of bindweed, and making sure none of the fat, pallid, friable rhizomes of it stay in the bed is a hassle. But it's garden work, and it makes me happy, even with all the drawbacks.

(On the allergy front, I should be able to get Allegra sometime next week. It would've been sooner, but the insurance company is dumb.)

One of the roses in the back has a name tag reading "Prominent", and that did seem to be what the flower looked like when it bravely stuck one up last year after being mowed. It was a lot smaller than it looks like it's meant to be, but I can hardly blame it. One of the others seems to just be root stock, but who knows what's been getting mowed into the lawn?

Today we demolished the pile of pruned wood that had been lying in the back for months, using a rented wood chipper. It was loud and tedious and there weren't enough goggles to go around, but we had a pretty good time and I think we managed to extract all the prickles from my arm. There are now two large trash cans of surplus chips to put into the compost when we get too heavy on nitrogen again, which won't be soon considering two cans' worth of chips and leaves went into the pile today. Worms in pile still alarmingly large.