he used a blade weed whacker and approached with a clear cut mentality.
two springs and summers of selectively weeding out the un useful weeds to help the useful ones establish themselves-- down the drain. gone is the black raspberry, the yarrow, the jewel weed, the mullen... so avid was he, he lopped the top of the healthiest habenero peppers. gone are the precious white blooms, soon to have been peppers.
the lot looks "fantastic" and our garden now looks forlorn.
things planted in the shade along the fence line now have full sun, and the well tended, much loved wildness looks SO misplaced, but oh so tempting to the deer who paid a visit last night, sampling the peas from the back side and eating down my two healthiest artichokes to nubs. i picked all the ripest pea pods i could find and i've strung up cans in the artichoke bed to clank when they come munching again, as there's still one good sized healthy artichoke left, as well as a smaller, meeker one who was a bit squeezed by my two green giants. the deer will have to amble up through the creek to get to the front side of that bed, which is probably much easier now that no thickets block their way.
i've decided creating perma culture gardens is much like making a painting... placing plants to work together, selectively cutting back growth to encourage other useful cultivars to thrive, all to seek a balance in beauty and productivity. last year i pulled a literal ton of himalayan knotweed, one strand at a time, making sure to get down to the root. even when i weed-eat, i do it selectively. it is possible.
the blackberry thicket down by the apple tree where sunflowers and beans were planted was weed-eated by us twice this summer, and it retained a wild beauty to it. because h and i both left what we wanted to encourage. it looks like a waste field now... nothing left standing but a lone cranberry bush for the deer to discover and forage upon.
it makes me sad, to have our once beautiful garden look as if it is the only thing not reduced to a tabla rasa, a clear cut field, ready for the speculators and the excavators to pull in, to create a development to sell cookie cutter homes to the jones. it'll take a few days, and quite a few adjustments, i imagine, to have our creation achieve it's previous balance in the landscape... i hope it's possible to achieve, but it feels like a herculean task at the moment.