The Shiek of Shaledom

March 12th, 2013

Here’s what I started with…

   State legislatures might be dysfunctional a lot of the time, but they are effective about getting one thing done – naming official state everythings, from state emblems to state birds to official state rocks.

   Pennsylvania, for example, has named the hemlock our official state tree and the mountain laurel our official state flower.

   Both are ironic picks since the hemlock is now getting wiped out by the woolly adelgid (good candidate for official state bug), and the mountain laurel is widely killed in home landscapes (official state dead shrub?)

   Maybe making the list jinxes the picked things?

   Anyway, these lists got me to thinking that I haven’t got around to naming any official anything in my yard. I don’t even have a name for my garden like a lot of fancy-schmancy horticulturists do.

   My official yard rock is easy: shale. I’ve got more flakes of the stuff in my soil than soil. If shale was as valuable as oil, I’d be the Sheik of Shaledom.

   My official yard bird is the cardinal… the one that keeps pecking at my windows.

   I don’t know if he/she thinks the reflection is another bird or what, but after a million or so fruitless window pecks over the past 2 years, you’d think he/she would’ve started to have doubts by now.

You’d think this window-pecking cardinal would’ve learned by now.

   My official yard flower is black medic. This is the dratted weed that gets little yellow flowers and has leaves that look like a darkish clover.

   I don’t know where it came from or where it’s going (apparently everywhere). But it seems to be tremendously happy and is the only thing I’ve found yet that beats pigweed, purslane and chickweed to the punch. 

  My official yard tree is the tree of Heaven. I wish I could say this pick was something cool like a stewartia or useful like a weeping peach, but this invader likes my homeland better than its own homeland (which definitely is NOT Heaven).

   I didn’t have any trouble with seedlings until my neighbors walked away from their home 2 years ago. Their place turned into a tree of Heaven arboretum overnight. I’ve had a devil of a time with seeds ever since.

   My official yard animal? Also a no-brainer: the groundhog. I’ve been outwitted and out-maneuvered by this dumpy species from day one.

   Faster than a speeding cabbage-grower, stronger than a bottle of bobcat urine, and more gymnastic than an Olympic pommel-horser going over a 3-foot wire fence, the groundhog is the true superhero of my landscape. I am at his mercy, and I admit it. (May this award jinx him.)

   And as for my yard’s name?

   Well, Longwood and Kew are already taken.

   I like the sound of Royal Hampden Twp. Botanical Gardens, but it might be a tad on the snooty side.

   Ditto for the Weigel Estate Arboretum and Plantitarium.

   So let’s just go with Groundhogville.