Yep - It's Spring Alright!

Mollie writes:

This Mollie is going to be hard to live with this spring, if all things pan out. I just took the mid-February stroll through my yard and I can tell, that at least in the Pacific NW, spring has sprung.

It's not just my daffodils, that are standing proud - all of 'em tipped with blooms. It's not my tulips, my hemerocallis, all luscious and green, spurting up through the frosted earth. It's not my crocus, my Hollywood Plum trees, just screaming to bud, or even my clematis, all freshly green AND budded.

Nope, it's the chick weed that's spreading all over my yard.

I don't have much of a weed problem, yet. But first comes the chickweed, followed by thistle, field horsetail, and the dreaded nettle. Nope, in the weed family, the harbinger of spring is chickweed.

I'd like to be offended that we call it chickweed (why not call it dudeweed?). But really, it's all fresh and dewey, with little white flowers mocking me. It's an annual, but comes back every year with a vengeance, so much so that it has to be a chickweed, with PMS, thank you very much. Only a female would be so intent on spreading so happily throughout the garden.

It's shallow rooted, however, like a lot of insincere chicks, so it's easy to pull. And that's what I plan on doing the next month. I'll put on my fatigues, my ivory pistols, my four-star helmut and make like General George S. Patton, rushing to the aid of the Allies at the Battle of the Bulge.

I'll have dirt under my fingernails and embedded in my cuticles. My shoes will be grass-stained, my knees caked in mud. But I'll be one happy Garden Avenger in March, and that's what good gardening is all about.

So break out your capes and leotards, the Garden Avengers are loose!