Roots

What’s blooming in the area: Tamarix, Austrian copper rose, snowball, skunkbush, yucca, red hot poker, tansy and tumble mustards, western stickseed, cryptantha, oriental poppy, fern-leaf globemallow, oxalis, alfilerillo, white evening primrose, bindweed, dandelion, native dandelion, goat’s beard, fleabane; June, needle, rice, three-awn and cheat grasses; buds on loco and hollyhock; grapes leafing.

What’s blooming in my yard: Spirea, beauty bush, iris, snow-in-summer, Jupiter’s beard, Bath’s pink, blue flax, vinca, pink evening primrose, golden spur columbine and Mount Atlas daisy; buds on Persian yellow and Dr. Huey roses, peony, sea pink, perky Sue, and coral bells.

What’s coming out: California poppies, butterfly weed, calamintha, morning glory, anthemis seedlings.

Bedding plants: Zonal geraniums blooming; rest waiting in pots for wind to die down.

Inside: Aptenia.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, gecko, cabbage butterfly, ladybugs on goat’s beard, large black harvester and small red ants.

Weather: Mornings around 40; afternoons hot, dry and windy; last rain 05/014/09; 14:11 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: John James Audubon used to shoot birds so he could paint them accurately, while botanists dug up plants to include roots in their illustrations.

Cameras, with their ever more sophisticated lenses, can see birds more clearly than Audubon and reveal more to us about their lives. With plants, however, something is lost when one only sees what’s above ground.

When I do spring cleaning, I recover that lost knowledge. I learn again that goats’ beard, yellow evening primrose and white sweet clover have tough straight taproots that come out in one piece, if the ground is wet, but that horseweed and grass sit atop buried mops that bring the soil with them.

I tend to forget what I learn over the winter, and have to rediscover I need to use a trowel to remove Mexican hats because the roots branch a few inches below ground, and break if they’re pulled.

However, there are things I don’t forget, the things that were painful to learn like piñon trees and black-eyed Susans are too sharp to handle, and you always grab spiny lettuce at the base. I know there’s no point in pulling a Siberian elm seedling because the root is at least twice as long as what I see. I might as well cut it, and save abrading my finger trying to pull it.

I never forget that roses, barberry and yucca are not the least bit grateful to have the weeds removed from their bases, and remember Saint John’s wort and tansy have herbal associations that should be warnings. Try as I might, I never have long enough sleeves to pull the underground runners without getting a rash from the dead stems.

Heath asters are deceptive. When they first appeared near one bed, I naively let them go. When the dead stalks collapsed in winter and smothered the desirable plants, I started pulling them. Since the flowers themselves are fine, if one overlooks the wasps, I put some near the fence, only to have them flop across my path as soon as they started blooming.

This year I decided they had to go. They still emerge in the original bed, with white stolons that creep underground as much as a foot. I’ve learned it’s best to pull the dead stalks, which will drag out at least two sprouts through the loosened ground. If I attack the young growth, it simply breaks.

I assumed the plants by the fence would be as easy. Unfortunately, since they’ve had several years to settle, they formed strong masses of woody main roots that spread under the surface and were at least an inch thick. They were so tough, I couldn’t cut through them with a shovel, even when I was standing on it with my full 115 pounds. The only way I could remove them was to pry them from the side.

As I struggled to loosen then, all I could think of was the plow that broke the plains and wondered how tough was prairie sod when the grasses reached deep into the soil. These at least were only a few inches below the surface.

I learned long ago, nothing short of full excavation will remove a dandelion and they always go to seed next to something I don’t want to disturb.

Photograph: Mature heath aster roots excavated 19 May 2010.