NOT WEEDS

The nice thing about growing perennial flowers is there’s no need to buy seeds or starts every year.  If they are happy in their location they somehow know when to appear in the spring and pretty much take care of themselves through the growing season.

The bad thing is a gardener needs to know what the baby perennials look like so there won’t be a massacre during the first few weedings in the spring.

For two years I tried without success to grow coneflowers in my garden from seed.

Then I saw young coneflower plants in a garden nursery and had a head-slap dufus moment.

This is a coneflower seedling.

This is the seedling of plantain (not the banana).

It is either a noxious weed or a useful herb depending on who looks at it.  I realized I had been ripping out all my baby coneflowers, mistaking them for weeds.

I may have also thought the young coneflowers were bindweed, the bane of gardeners everywhere.

This is baby bindweed.

This is a handful of adult bindweeds I pulled from my garden last fall.  These malevolent plants steal into gardens, send roots all the way to bedrock and then proceed to choke the life out of anything that will hold still long enough for them to strangle.   

My infant coneflowers didn’t have a chance against these masters of mimicry.

 The next year I transplanted my coneflowers to my garden after they were big enough to be recognized for what they were.

This spring I weeded my flower bed and then realized I couldn’t see any seedlings for my baby’s breath a.k.a. gypsophila.

This is young baby’s breath.

This is a noxious and sneaky plant called prostrate knotweed.  Once again I’d annihilated my flowers in my zeal to kill the weeds.

So now I’ve planted more baby’s breath in a flower pot.  
Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to be so diligent in the early execution of weeds. 

Here is a fun post by Eliza Cross at Happy Simple Living with Seven Ways to Politely Discourage Bindweed in Your Garden.

IN THE LONG RUN

After months of training and anticipation the big day of the Ogden Utah race arrived.  My crazy running children and some of their family rode on one of the buses that took the runners way-way-WAY up the canyon to the start of the race.

CindyLooWhoo and Greasy Lightning were super excited to be up before dawn.

Beavis---not so much.

Greasy Lightning is so fast you can’t even get a good picture of her.

They were joining 3,500 runners in the half marathon.  The 2,500 who would run the marathon rode other buses another 13 miles farther out.

A little over an hour after they started their race DH, CindyLooWho’s hubby and I went to the finish line to watch them come in.

We chose seats on the bleachers so I could see over the crowd.

The first three runners in the half marathon came in close together.  The winner’s time was a little over one hour and eight minutes.

While we waited for our own favorite racers I took pictures of things like all the security guys, some with their K-9 buddies.

I knew Bobert would be wearing a gray shirt and a baseball cap.  That describes at least two guys in this photo.  None are him.

Then faster than a speeding bullet he shot past.

Greasy Lightning would be wearing a light blue shirt and white cap.  This is not her.

Right after I took this picture a lady with big hair got in front of me.  So I moved up the bleachers.

In that moment of inattention Greasy Lightning went by.  I got a photo of the back of her head.

Beavis came in with a big kick and passed several of the other runners in the race to the finish. He beat his goal by several minutes with a time of 1:56.

The first three picked up their medals and some treats and waited for CindyLooWhoo.

She came in well under her goal and finished at two hours and eleven minutes.

Beavis, Bobert, Greasy Lightning and her brother.

CindyLooWho and Beavis share stats.

Winner, winner!

Now, where’s the chicken dinner?