Weeds11's Profile

About me

Weeds-11, that’s me. Weeds and I have a love/hate relationship. I respect them in the wild; hate them in my yard. Either way, I have a lifelong bond with them. The picture is a star thistle I found growing in the bottom of a canyon next to a dry riverbed in the middle of the high Oregon Desert. Sagebrush, rattlesnake and scorpion country. You have to respect a plant that will grow and bloom under those conditions.
I live in Eastern Washington State. For thirty years, my home was next to a rural country road; then the “powers that be” decided to build four-lane truck route through my front yard. Argh! Just the mention of their plan sent land values to the bottom. We looked at property for several months but couldn’t find anything that we could afford that looked like home. In a moment of weakness, we called a house mover. They pried our two-story house with attached garage off its foundation, loaded it on a trailer and hauled it to the back of our five-acre property.
This is where you guys come in, I left most of the trees and plants that I had been collecting for years and the soil that was heavy, but black and rich for yellow clay soil. It’s ankle deep when it’s wet and brick hard when it’s dry. In desperation to have “instant garden,” we hauled in some huge moss and lichen-covered rocks. We uprooted and moved shrubs that were small enough to pick up with a backhoe. Most of those plants took a deep breath and survived. I’m not a gardener like you guys, but If you have words of wisdom, I’m listening.
(Zone 5b, to minus 15 degrees) My plan for the small area behind the narrow back lawn is natural woodsy look with a peek-a-boo path leading to interesting objects.