August 10, 2008Roses blooming again (even though I never feed them. Benign neglect?) Tomatoes finally coming in. Eggplants blooming. Lantana, as ever, blooming its blooming head off. Fennel gone to seed.
Ah, the fennel gone to seed.
Talk to any naturalist or ranger in Southern California and they'll tell you, fennel is one of the scourges of the Southwest. It's a weed, that's for sure. It grows in vacant lots, along disturbed roadsides, and anywhere the soil has been broken up to let it get a toehold.
When I tell them at the native plant centers that I have some in my yard (most likely volunteers), they almost always tell me to rip it out. I don't, for my own reasons, I'll get to in a bit. But what I do is, before it goes to seed to feed the birds and thus spread into other disturbed places, I cut it back and put it in the compost bin.
Ryan and I took our trimmers out yesterday to bring down and stood beside the 10 foot plants. Butterflies and bees were buzzing around the flowers and, as every time we cut them back (twice a year? three times?) they are covered with ladybugs.
I'm talking hundreds.
So it's a bit of a dilemma when we stand out there with our trimmers. Sure fennel is a heinous weed, but here it is producing the number one natural control of pests in my yard. It's always hard for Ryan because he thinks not only is fennel cool looking, it attracts all these wonderful insects.
He's right (though really you do have to cut them down to the ground or they get a bit ratty mid-summer), so we we make it our duty to cut them down, but to try to save as many of the beneficial bugs as we can.
So yesterday Abby, Ryan, and I took our places. Ryan was the fennel chopper ("Timber!!!"), I caught each as they fell down, and Abby was in charge of relocating as many ladybugs as she could to neighboring plants. It was a nice little set up, actually, as Abby has wont to play imaginative games while Ryan and I are working in the yard ("Okay, Dad, you're the gardener and I'm your daughter who is just going to school.")
We chopped them all down (and thus exposing a really ugly and weedy patch of the yard, unfortunately), put the pieces into our green yard waste bin and left the lid open for the ladybugs to fly away away, hopefully, to our yard.
I don't think anyone who has read my take on gardening, or even the title of my blog, believes I think gardening is easy. It's physically hard and sometimes frustrating work. So why have it as a hobby? Why indeed.
Our Saturdays are free(ish). Wendy, my wife is at work until 2 or 3, and I'm in charge of a 6 and 8 year old. I did my years of staying inside and playing Thomas the Tank engine, or racing outside to do my work while someone was napping. I needed something that was close to home and was actually interactive with my family (Wendy pointed out, rightly so, television and movies aren't really interactive.)
So here it is, something close to home, that teaches my kids about the natural world around them, and something that allows me help bring back a little patch of ground to a sort of balance.
And, of course, there's moments like these ladybugs.
Who can deny such a wonderful moment such as this?
No one indeed.
