It's drastically hot and desperately dry. I'm too scared to go up to the allotment. I dare not weed. Any soil exposed will desiccate and dry away. And so, the bindweed cometh.
That's a pretty scabious, isn't it? It's Black Cat. I grew it from seed. The bees love it. But look at what's growing over it, in lumpy, messy garlands. It's our native Morning Glory, Hedge Bindweed.
Ironically, as bindweed runs riot across my back garden, out front my Morning Glory is having a terrible year. It can't get enough water up, and the leaves and small and scattered with stress spots. Usually floribundant and fantastically prolific, this year the vine is struggling to cover the shed, and I've had maybe, three flowers - in a pale and sickly lilac.
So, every time a white trumpet flashes from my bindweed, or I see a scamper of heart-shaped flowers romp across a flower-bed, my heart leaps a little and I hesitate, for just one more flower. At least it's growing, not turning toes and dying in the heat. Although even its not flowering very much. Nothing is, not even the fuchsias and pelargoniums.
This is insanity, of course. What I need to do is hoe it off and section it out (never yank it - the bindweed will be fine and whatever its twined will uproot). and I do, I do - for five minutes, and then I need to get out of the sun, the heat, and tomorrow the tiny section of garden I've cleared will be merrily re-invaded in a vast heat-pumped caricature of the usual Sisyphean summer weeding dance.
Still, the flowers are pretty.
That's a pretty scabious, isn't it? It's Black Cat. I grew it from seed. The bees love it. But look at what's growing over it, in lumpy, messy garlands. It's our native Morning Glory, Hedge Bindweed.
Ironically, as bindweed runs riot across my back garden, out front my Morning Glory is having a terrible year. It can't get enough water up, and the leaves and small and scattered with stress spots. Usually floribundant and fantastically prolific, this year the vine is struggling to cover the shed, and I've had maybe, three flowers - in a pale and sickly lilac.
So, every time a white trumpet flashes from my bindweed, or I see a scamper of heart-shaped flowers romp across a flower-bed, my heart leaps a little and I hesitate, for just one more flower. At least it's growing, not turning toes and dying in the heat. Although even its not flowering very much. Nothing is, not even the fuchsias and pelargoniums.
This is insanity, of course. What I need to do is hoe it off and section it out (never yank it - the bindweed will be fine and whatever its twined will uproot). and I do, I do - for five minutes, and then I need to get out of the sun, the heat, and tomorrow the tiny section of garden I've cleared will be merrily re-invaded in a vast heat-pumped caricature of the usual Sisyphean summer weeding dance.
Still, the flowers are pretty.
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