I have just planted dandelions, purslane, millet, wild lettuce in my garden beds to improve the soil. Weeds bring up many minerals that the veggies don't. I am not sure where the hate of weeds ever came from. Weeds improve the soil. I noticed in a bed when mulch was thin, and the grass came up through it, the English peas did better than in areas with thick (weedless) mulch, so now I encourage my weeds. The peas were more productive, and healthier. I have a notil garden, so I guess that is why. Constant tillage promotes weeds. Nature is trying to fix what we broke. Nature abhors bare ground. The more bare ground you have, the more weeds you will have. The more you til the worse your "so called" weed problem will be. When I needed to plant into a bed covered in weeds, I weed wacked it. I am sure it was faster and easier than chemicals or pulling. This was only to allow sun to hit the newly planted seeds and to provide mulch for the hungry soil life. Mostly I did this, to install a trellis for my cowpeas. I hate digging to insert the poles, but this is a one time thing (until the poles rot), so soil life should not be too angry with me. I was not interested in "killing" the weeds, just making them shorter. I use soil plugs in the mulch so I do not have to pull the mulch back to sow seeds. Seeds will not sprout where plants already exists thicky, which is the main reason I thick we got the idea weeds are bad. Just cut back the weeds where you plant the seed and and area around the spot to allow sun to hit it. Pulling weeds or crops is a no no for me. The roots aerate the soil, and provide food for the soil life after they die. Rootless soil get compacted easily and is very bad for soil life. When alive, any sort of roots are teaming with life to help your garden. Gardeners should get more in tune with nature (and the way God made earth's garden) and promote life not death, by killing weeds, pests, fungus, earthworms and other soil life. When killing is focused on, the work load increases. If soil life is killed by gardening practices that do not respect soil life, you will have to use fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and more water. Pests only are attracted to sick plants. Weeds only show up where they are needed. Feed the soil, not the plants. I planted cowpeas directly in the sod. It performed better than the mulched bed. The American Indians only weeded right around the freshly sown corn seeds, to help it to sprout and to let it get sunlight, but when the corn got taller they did not waste time on such silliness. I think that weeding came into vogue from places with extremely short and cold summers, like england. I guess the theory is, that bare soil is warmer. Everywhere else weeding is really not necessary. I think to emulate nature is the easiest way to garden. Here is some info on nature's way. The Weeds as Indicators Of Soil Conditions The Weeds Friends or Foe? The Using Weeds as Indicators of Turf Management and Environmental Conditions Soil Indicator Weeds Soil What Weeds Can Tell You About Your Garden Soil Controlling weeds and pests Soil Healthy Naturally Weed Power - Weeds and What they Mean If you are at battle with your weeds and like everything to look neat and tidy, then the newspaper and mulch thing works great. I had no weeds when I have used that technique. Mulch is hard to come by here in July and August in Texas, unless I plan to waste water by watering the yard to get the grass to grow in the heat of summer. That is how I decided to go with the flow and use nature's way to keep the soil cooler and moisture in by allowing weeds to get tall. The longer the weed's roots, the farther down water will penetrate.

What a lovely plaque! Megan is very beautiful. Seeing her picture makes knowing you lost her all the more sorrowful. I am so very sorry for your loss. You know, it is hard to come up with ideas without knowing Megan so I went online to see if I could find anything and found your photo albums on Webshots. Boy, she was a pretty and vivacious girl and very artistic! I can fully understand why you want her place to be very, very special. I found the picture of her headstone, here it is ... I like nanagrandma's idea of the arbor. The stone looks almost black so I think a black metal arbor would be gorgeous with pink roses growing over her headstone. Maybe attach a mailbox to it for the messages like twomonths suggested. You could make color copies of some of her artwork and decoupage it on the mailbox. You could hang small things from the arbor like little angel ornaments, pictures of family and pets and windchimes (maybe a cow or two) too. Depending upon how much room you have for planting, you could even make glass totems on top of a bud vase placed over some rebar pounded into the ground. It could be made of pink and blue glass pieces. That way it would be off the ground and making it easier for grass cutting. I think once you start putting things together, it will give you greater comfort knowing you are keeping her memory alive and staying close to her. Just spending time with her, planting flowers, will help. I really like your idea of making her place something special and uniquely hers.

Thanks for the identification! I was thinking it must have some Gallica in it....I grow dozens of Gallicas and it certainly reminds me of one with the form and the deep purple color it fades to. There must be much more Gallica in it than China, as I cannot imagine in my zone 4 climate China blood would fare so well over the winter without protection. I like being able to give it a name, so thanks for your votes on "Red Runaround". I have some cuttings of it and will add it to the "Rescued Rose Ranch". Every summer DH and I discover yet another interesting old rose in old cemeteries, most of which we can identify, but a few now and then which stump us. I appreciate your input! Celeste

My wife and I live on a 1/3rd acre block in the Maryland suburbs and I have had to deal with the lawn that came with the house. Putting in a large veggie garden will help get rid of a lot of it. I think that the really hard work comes in getting it established (this depends a little on how you wish to do this and what sort of grass is already there -- some kinds are a real pain to get rid of). But once the garden is established and you get a routine going you will be surprised how little time is required on, say, a 1000 square foot garden. As the last poster noted, fruiting trees and bushes would be a good idea and will also help to get rid of that dreaded lawn. I notice that you seem to live in a well-manicured neighborhood, so perhaps this suggestion is not the best, but one way to keep a lawn down that is a lot quicker than a push-mower and does not use gas is a scythe, though it may not get you the fine cut you are used to with mowers (I have not used one, so others might care to comment on this). I don't see any reason you cannot have bees, provided they are legal (which they usually are, but check local ordinances). At the back of your property line seems like an out of the way spot or you could make an enclosure. We are going to put in bees this spring and there are plenty of people here in the suburbs who have bees on less than 1/3rd of an acre lots. But bees do involve a fair amount of work, initial expense, and a pretty steep initial learning curve. Whether they will bother the neighbors perhaps depends on whether they know about them. There is little doubt that bees in fact visit their gardens throughout the spring and summer. The main worries here --ones we are having to come to grips with -- are bees in neighbors swimming pools and the like (you must provide them a consistent water source) and swarming, the hive's reproductive strategy of splitting where one half of the hive takes off with the old queen to find new lodgings. Can be a bit alarming for people to see 20,000 or more bees clustered in their backyard. There are ways to minimize this -- that's part of the learning curve.