A home-made tuteur from scraps

Had some fun yesterday making a tutuer for a clematis I transplanted to my front foundation.  I had some really nice mulberry branches that were begging to be used and not tossed in the burn pile.  I tied the branches together with some bits of copper wire left over from our basement remodel and wrapped a grapevine around. Fresh grapevine is so pliable and easy to use.  Dried grapevine needs a soaking before you can bend it into a circle.

The bees and butterflies approve of my allium addiction

Oh, and there's so many butterflies!  I saw whites, monarchs, swallowtails, admirals, an angle-wing, a dark-winged butterfly I haven't seen before, and a hackberry butterfly.  I wonder if this butterfly party is courtesy of home gardeners and their penchant for lots of different plants?

All my columbines are in bloom now

Those were the only good gardening events yesterday.  The rest of my day sucked.  I found out that I have a massive common asparagus beetle infestation on my asparagus.  Every spear is just loaded with eggs!  Now I'll have to spend my afternoons squashing the adults and larvae.   

I also found out that there's some patches of poison ivy in my woods.  Normally I avoid herbicides and pesticides but not for poison ivy.  It's getting the brush killer treatment!  Luckily, I was able to rinse off in cold water right away so the oil wouldn't seep into my skin.  Thank heavens for that!

Finally, I found out something shocking.  There's a big patch of bishop's weed  that I've was planning on pulling out in the future but wasn't in a hurry to do so.  Everything changed yesterday--while working in my asparagus patch I noticed a bunch of seedlings I didn't recognize...hundreds, maybe thousands of little sprouts, every inch of open ground was covered.  I took a closer look and realized they are bishop's weed.  It self-sows!  I had no idea that stuff could set viable seed; I thought it was listed as invasive because it's such an aggressive groundcover.   

Not sure how long this tuteur
will last but it was fun to make!

Well, you can imagine that my plan for the day was immediately revised.   The mature plants are just starting to flower so I had to do something quick.  I've had some success with digging out the roots but this time I'm going to try smothering the patch with black plastic film first.  I've heard that smothering doesn't work but this patch is on a super steep slope and the plants are so tall it's hard to tell where the ground is. I don't need to plant this bed anytime soon so I can wait out those little monsters and once the foliage withers, I can dig out the roots easily.  (At least that's how I'm hoping it's going to work!)

Hope you enjoy your day!