I agree that having three kids can be challenging at times but how long can I use that excuse as to why I haven’t pulled any weeds from my garden this year?

Our neighbours tend to expect some effort when it comes to landscaping. While I don’t recall ever being told by anyone that our home is looking over-grown and embarrassing, I can tell by the way they quickly race overnight guests past our front yard while touring the street during an evening stroll, or arrive masked with fancy clippers in the wee hours of the night to dead-head the unsightly clumps that scream “stay back” from our one-time welcoming front walkway.

I tend to leave things with pretty flowers, vibrant colours or plants that make an interesting ground cover. Some may be weeds, some may be paid for plants. I’m not willing to risk throwing away perfectly good padunkles because some rogue turnbuckles are trying to ruin it for everyone. I think I even left a ball of twine amongst the rubble because it added shape, texture and colour to an eclectic arrangement of mafuloos.

Two springs ago, after admiring a beautiful selection of hearty irises at my in-laws home, my mother-in-law sent us home with a scoop from her bountiful garden, bulbs, green stems and purple flowers to transplant. We were excited. We dug a hole, we set the plants in place and we watched in awe as their lavender flowers winked at us from the front garden.
In anticipation of the next batch, I noticed some of the irises bloomed spectacular purple flowers and some took on the form of a long, brown tubular shape at the tip.

It didn’t take a genius, (just a neighbour), to point out the clump of bulrushes that were suffocating the irises and taking over our garden. Unaware that plants acted in such a malicious and homicidal way toward each other, I was a little unnerved. Was I next?

I remembered an episode of CSI Miami where the murder took place in the Everglades. The all knowing Horatio (David Caruso) explained as he kneeled toward the ground with purpose, aware he had twelve cameras focused on his arching eyebrow, that bulrushes were the only plant that could grow in the glades because they killed anything else that tried. I was suddenly on a mission to protect my beautiful yellow and black newcombe balls, my deep burgundy cauliflowers and my whimsical green spriglet tree.

How does one rid a garden of bulrushes? Simply put, you don’t. If you pull them, the stem breaks and more shoots form instantly. If you try to get at the root, you quickly find yourself tugging at a never ending string that circles the earth twice before you just give up. If you spray poison directly on them, they smile. If you spray poison into the hole you made after the pulling and the threading, it kills all of the surrounding plant-life leaving nothing in your garden but bulrushes……just like in the glades, just like Horatio told you would happen.
I thought bulrushes thrived underwater, in swamps, surrounded by alligators. How can they possibly be choking my rose coloured hornsours when they shouldn’t even be living here.

To my knowledge, we don’t live in a marsh, our basement is bone dry and I have yet to see the glaring eyes of a gator sink beneath the cedar mulch, camouflaged behind the purple ragamuffins.

“Did you see my bulrushes?” I call out to a neighbour briskly walking by.

“Oh, is that what those are?”

Pretending you didn’t see them or know what they are will not get you far Ms. Perfecta Lawn Grata.

“Don’t worry about it Liz. Cut yourself some slack, you have three kids.”