My Ugly Garden learns the magic of water
August 6, 2009
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Liz McDonnell
SPECIAL TO YOURHOME.CA
Let me overstate the obvious here — water is important. I realized that long ago, from the virtually waterless hosta incident that made me feel like "Liz the Plant Slayer" to other plant-related slayings of the overwatering variety. Loran Eisley had it right in his 1957 book, The Immense Journey: "If there is a magic on this planet, it is contained in water."
Water is the giver and taker of life. Use too much water and you risk damage. Use too little water and you risk damage. It doesn't really seem fair, does it? Water should do its job and then be done with it, period. But no, that would be too easy for a superzero like me (I am considering a cape as gardening apparel).
With June and July being the rainiest two months on record (thanks Environment Canada), I figured watering My Ugly Garden would be taken care of. Admittedly, it wasn't raining everyday, and so a soil check might have been warranted, but I figured everything would even out. Yeah, not so much.
It appears that I might have my blinders on. Okay, I might never have taken them off. I was watching the rain, not the plants. I was watching what gives life, not the life itself.
Sheets of rain teeming down have washed away a lot of valuable soil around existing plants, exposing roots and putting my plants in harm's way.
On the flip side, sheets of rain teeming down have created Incredible Hulk weeds to spread across my path.
It seems that rain of the magnitude we have recently encountered does have the ability to give life — just not to what I want. Water is magic. Now if I could only use it for good and not for evil.
Liz McDonnell is a freelance researcher. She can be reached at liz.mcd1974@gmail.com.
Read more:
- Welcome to My Ugly Garden
- What to do with My Ugly Garden?
- Starting from the ground up
- My Ugly Garden has a visitor
- My Ugly Garden, meet Woolly Thyme
- My Ugly Garden suffers a loss
- My Ugly Garden parties
- A plan for My Ugly Garden
- Shopping for My Ugly Garden
- Making My Ugly Garden pooch-friendly
- Food for My Ugly Garden
- Cleaning My Ugly Garden's 'cage'
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