Ground Elder

The rain held off this afternoon, enabling me to get a couple of hours' gardening in for one of my customers. Most of the time was spent battling against ground elder, which was growing more lushly and rampantly than I've seen it anywhere, I think!  In places it was almost as tall as I am . . . it must be really good soil.

The roots were everywhere, of course, and very matted and strung together.  I enjoy weeding, wouldn't be doing it otherwise, but two hours of this is quite enough;  and, however carefully you sift the roots, there's always something left behind!  So I won't have got rid of it all, but four large containers of it are in my car waiting to be recycled.  I assume the recycling process is very severe, as I wouldn't want the remains of these roots to be infecting anyone else's garden!

It goes to show, though, how small omissions can have big consequences.  This isn't a garden left abandoned for decades, just one in which, for good reasons, not much has been done for a year or so.  In that time the ground elder (and other weeds too, but none as rampantly) has virtually taken over.  I've had to  tease out the roots from around large shrubs that were in danger of becoming completely overrun.

In our daily lives also, we take our eyes off the ball at our risk and peril.  Small areas of indiscipline, times when we relax our guard, take time out from things we should be attending to, slacken off - they really are important, the impact is cumulative;  almost without noticing, we become fat and flabby and out of condition.  And this is, of course, as much a spiritual problem as a physical or mental one.  It isn't that we need to do very much, so much as that we do need to remember to programme it in, to be regular and attentive in the small disciplines we need to maintain.

Ground elder isn't that hard to control, though it is a bit tiresome.  All you need to do is to pull it out whenever you see it.  Don't wait until it's a huge plant with flowers  and fruit - do it when there's just a single leaf showing.  Do it daily, keep on at it, be watchful and aware;  show it who's boss.