The Dirt on Nicky

Where once there was a pathway . . .

It’s been a damp spring in our part of the Ozarks. Seedlings carefully transplanted have been settled into place and refreshed by vernal showers, and quick growth is easy when conditions are almost perfect. Vegetables are not the only flora to benefit from the rains, however. In fact, in some beds it’s already a challenge finding some of the young lettuces or cucumbers because the beds and walkways are being overrun by the original inhabitants.

Where once there was a pathway, a jungle emerges, and it’s only early June. It’s getting harder to get from here to there, and in another month, I wonder if there will be a there there.

Happens every spring, and it ought to. The rocky hillside where I imposed a garden already had a healthy ecosystem long before I arrived, and pathways covered by shredded bark are no match for what nature unfolds.

I can’t call the wild bounty of plants in the pathways intruders because I am the intruder. However, I will insist on a presence here and respectfully remove most of the uninvited guests, but – reality check – they are there every minute and I am not.

Among the party crashers are hundreds of curly dock plants. If I let one plant produce seeds (I did), I should expect those seeds will sprout when the time comes. Same for broad-leaf and narrow-leaf plantain plants. They are everywhere, and so is chickweed, henbit and field sorrel.

I harvest lamb’s quarters leaves for culinary use, but I can’t eat all of them.

Wild roses (also called dog roses) produce attractive pink flowers followed by hips, but they are at least aggressive if not virulent spreaders that will take over an area if left unchecked. They now dominate one intersection and are encroaching on the end of the asparagus bed.

All of these native inhabitants have culinary and medicinal value, so I keep a few for those purposes and out of respect. After all, they have grown here since… when?… Eisenhower, the Battle of Pea Ridge, the Osage days, woolly mammoths?

And just because they have nutritional or medicinal value, I am not obligated to keep every single plant. They are also valuable in a compost bin or a leaf mulch pile, and I figure plants know this process better than I do. Through thousands of generations of being curly docks, there have been lessons learned and passed along. Humans are not the only life forms that have learned and adapted over time.

But humans have learned there are seasons, and all things must pass. For example, two weeks ago, there was a clearly marked path between the raspberry row and the bed with flowers along the fence. A gardener might need boots to go there now, and take your cell phone with you. Another bed with four neatly mulched rows of onions is now pockmarked like Jackson Pollock splattered it with cosmos and Rumex crispus.

I’m responsible for the cosmos. I planted them years ago, let them go to seed, and now they might be on this hillside forever. Same with amaranth, dill, garlic chives, parsley – all proficient reseeders which I encouraged, and now they share space on the hillside with those that came before.

Some of these plants are more invasive than others. Morning glories produce glorious flowers, but I don’t want a thousand of them, and they are sneaky the way I might not even notice them until they are draped around my bush beans.

So what does the earnest gardener do? You do your best. I don’t have a magic wand yet, but I have a few pairs of gloves, limited time to use them, so I use them when I can.

Wild was here first, so enjoy your jungle.