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I went to the informational meeting for the coop hosts for the Tour de Coops and oh-my-holy-Jesus, these people are intense!  I had considered getting the chicken coop all prettied up for the tour, but it hadn’t occurred to me that really these people are gardeners—intense, crazy gardeners.  They are going to care about things like my invasive species and such, and my wilted and dying basil, and my patch that was suppose to be cauliflower but is actually some crazy chrysanthemum that seems to spread wildly all over my yard.  And what with my trip to Ashland next week (poor me!), I only have 9 days to get the entire yard totally whipped into shape and ready to be oooed and ahhhed at.  I’m a bit stressed out about this.

The tour is going to be fun though.  The organizers said that we should expect between 300 and 500 people to come visit our yard.  With that many feet, maybe I should make a path right through the invasive ivy.  They could trample it to death, right?  The previous owners of this house were great believers in plants that spread, so most of my work these days is ripping out, not putting in.  I picked up an invasive weed pamphlet up on the Wildwood trail and saw not one but five weeds that are in residence in my yard (blackberry, ivy, pokeweed, morning glory, and old man’s beard or clematis).  That isn’t even counting spearmint, which perhaps is not invasive but still makes me do battle yearly pushing it back so that I don’t have an entire yard of cocktail garnish.

To be fair, my yard is better every year.  Sometimes it is even pretty.  I’m thinking that if I can pace myself over the next couple weeks I can arrive at something lovely in time for the tour.  I’ll let you know!

In: Chickens Are Super Fabulous, Environment, Projects That I Do With My Clever Little Fingers, urban farming | | #