Ep 265 - Tending What We Can in the Garden of Life
Sun, Aug 16, 2026 12:01PM • 12:23
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
mile-a-minute, stilt grass, duckweed, weeding, invasive plants, blackberry lily, garden life, nature lessons, pond care, rock wall, ferns, sedges, wildlife, rainfall, plant growth
SPEAKERS
Mary Stone
Mary Stone 00:00
Hello, fellow lovers of all things green. I'm Mary Stone, and welcome to Garden Dilemmas, Delights, and Discoveries. It's not only about gardens; it's about nature's inspirations, about grasping the glories of the world around us, gathering what we learn from Mother Nature, and carrying these lessons into our garden of life. So let's jump in in the spirit of learning from each other, we have lots to talk about.
Mary Stone 00:26
Hello there, it's Mary Stone on the screen porch, and I'm sitting with you during the brief time between the daytime cicada chorus and the nighttime singers we spoke about way back in episode 177, the nighttime chorus of garden insects. Actually, I do hear them starting, so we better hurry along in our conversation. It's an interesting time of day. A little pause between one chorus and the next, and what an interesting week I've had as well. I hope you had a good one. I want to thank you for your lovely comments about last week's episode, another lesson from the leaf. Help is on the way. It resonated with many of you, and that warms my heart. And our chat helped me too, and I'm so grateful. Being human is not always smooth sailing, but by accepting things, allowing ourselves to feel and process our feelings. Eventually, we can let things go, much like a leaf in the water, finding peace even during challenging times.
Mary Stone 01:30
Last week, I spoke about how I find respite in the garden while weeding the undesirables. Well, this week I've been on a mission, and it starts like this:
Mary Stone 01:40
Hello, fellow lovers of all things green. mile-a-minute weed and Japanese stilt grass have decided to cohabitate in parts of my woodland, creating a knotted-up garden of many bamboo-like grass roped around a triangular-leaved invader with one of the most perfectly descriptive common names there is: mile-a-minute Weed. Its botanical name is Persicaria perfoliata, and I was first introduced to it long ago at the lovely property of a client named Sarah. She had a naturalized buffer surrounding a beautiful sloping backyard, and sadly, mile-a-minute was smothering much of it. It was the first time I had seen such an invasion of this light-green vine, which can grow as much as 6 inches a day and 25 feet in a season. No kidding, it hangs like thick drapery over trees and shrubs, shading the plants beneath it and hindering their photosynthesis. So it can indeed be devastating, much like kudzu in the south.
Mary Stone 02:43
The almost perfectly triangular leaves make it easy to identify. Its flowers are insignificant, but then come green berries that ripen to a beautiful reflective blue, beautiful and invasive as heck. Birds and other critters eat the berries and help spread the seeds far and wide, so I've been determined to keep mile-a-minute out of the wooded areas. Thankfully, it's fairly easy to pull, although I have to wear gloves because it's prickly and sticky. It's really kind of interesting how plants have these defensive mechanisms, isn't it?
Mary Stone 03:17
The other morning, before heading out to meet new clients far from here, I pulled a bunch of it and piled it on top of a fallen tree, knowing I wanted to move it into the driveway and cook the heck out of it. Don't I sound mean? It's there now. I'm cooking the roots. It hadn't gone into berry yet, which is a good thing. You really want to get ahead of those beautiful blueberries, and you certainly don't want the plants to reroot, because that could easily happen if you just throw them into the brush pile. We spoke about mile-a-minute back in episode 107, and in that story, it tells you more about how to remedy the dilemma. So I'll put a link in the show notes.
Mary Stone 03:57
Speaking of weeding, one of the most fun outcomes of the heavy rains we've had involves my cement pond. Until recently, it was covered in duckweed, that fascinating tiny plant we spoke about last year in episode 215. The tiny wonder of duckweed. I had always wondered what the lovely green growth was that started to cover my pond in mid to late summer. I thought it might be an undesirable fungus until my friend Blaine Rothheiser sent me an extraordinary photo of a green frog peeking through the tiny leaves, identifying it as duckweed. It's amongst the smallest flowering plants in the world. Each tiny floating plant is only about a quarter of an inch, and under the right conditions, it can reproduce remarkably quickly, but it's beneficial, and I grew to adore it. But I admit I missed seeing some clear water.
Mary Stone 04:51
The frogs are more visible now without the green carpet. I described before how my pond helps control the mountain runoff. There's a cement dam at the end, gratefully now largely covered with moss, and an overflow trough that dumps the water towards the Johnsonburg Creek. During the recent three and a half inch storm, the rushing water took a good part of the duckweed away. Some of it landed on the lawn on each side of the overflow, which was actually quite pretty, and I took a photo of it, which you can see in the blog version of this story.
Mary Stone 05:26
Then came another rain event, and that cleared the pond completely. Mother Nature did the skimming for me. As much as I enjoyed the duckweed and loved learning about the fascinating flora, I have to admit I'm glad to see the clear water again. The blue heron is too. His prey is easier to see. Sorry, frogs. Isn't that how nature works? There is almost always another side of the equation.
Mary Stone 05:53
And speaking of things taking over, back to my other weeding mission: Japanese stilt grass. Oh my goodness, it's all over the place. The botanical name is Microstegium vimineum, has become increasingly prevalent in my woods. Another common name for it, oddly enough, is mary grass, although I have no idea why, and I take no ownership. Thank you very much. And you know, maybe it's just me, but it seems that stilt grass is taller this year, almost knee-high in places. It is kind of pretty. It's a soft grass. If you didn't know how aggressive it can be, squelching out desirable native plants.
Mary Stone 06:35
At the top of my rustic stone stairs is an old rock wall built by the original owner. It was disturbed a bit when the boulders were harvested from my boulder wall, and I've been slowly restoring it myself, repositioning some of the stones as I walk through the woods. So after wrestling with the mile-a-minute and really it wasn't wrestling because it pulls fairly easily, I started weeding the stilt grass around the old rock wall. I wanted to reveal the ferns that have naturalized there, along with the carrocks, our native sedges. The comedy of it is that I haven't kept up with weeding on other parts of my ornamental gardens. But you know what? We do the best we can. I do have a weed whacker now, and I'm going to get out there and cut some of the larger patches in the woods before they go to seed. Make little paths through it because it is kind of difficult to walk through it.
Mary Stone 07:27
When pulling stilt grass, I always wear long sleeves and garden gloves. I've heard from people who have developed terrible rashes after working around stilt grass. I also wear those nifty garden sleeves a friend gave me. She bought them from Farmers Defense, and they're called protection sleeves. I have the garden flower pattern, complete with sunflowers, my favorite. One of the first people that taught me about the stilt grass rash dilemma was Suzanne, who I've spoken about a few times. Several years ago, I worked with her on a garden renovation that included a wonderfully unique walkway. And while working there, I learned about a plant that was new to me-blackberry lily. Suzanne's blackberry lilies were growing amongst a serious infestation of stilt grass. Of all her perennials, though, it seemed to be competing heartily with it. At first, I wondered if perhaps it were invasive too, and thankfully it's not quite so. Blackberry lily, botanically known as Iris domestica, isn't really a lily at all. Its charming orange flowers are followed by seed pods resembling blackberries, which is where the common name comes from, and yes, it can be an enthusiastic self-seeder, but what I remember most is the sight of something so lovely managing to grow amongst all those undesirables. It was a newspaper column and a blog post years ago, and Stilt Grass even had a role in my fiction story I shared with you, "Truth and Tale of Two Country Gardens," although much of that was based on truth.
Mary Stone 09:06
Funny how certain plants and certain dilemmas keep showing up in our stories. Maybe that's because they keep showing up in our lives. As I stood there clearing around the old stone wall, uncovering the ferns and the carrocks hidden beneath the stilt grass, I thought about all the other parts of the garden I hadn't gotten to. There will always be another weed to pull, another stone to put back in place, another part of the garden that needs tending, and another part of our lives that do too.
Mary Stone 09:41
Last week we talked about letting go of what we cannot control, allowing ourselves to be like a leaf floating along with the current rather than fighting against it. Maybe this week's lesson is a companion to that. While we let go of what we cannot control, we contend what we can. We don't have to clear the whole woods today. We don't have to put every stone back in place. We don't even have to weed the whole garden. Clearing a little space around an old stone wall so the ferns can show themselves again is enough. And sometimes Mother Nature takes care of the weeding herself, sending three and a half inches of rain rushing through a pond and carrying away a carpet of duckweed. Although Mother Nature, if you'd like to take care of the stilt grass a mile-a-minute next time, I'd be most grateful.
Mary Stone 10:33
Indeed, there will always be undesirables among the beautiful things in our garden and in this garden of life, but there will always be blackberry lilies blooming amongst the stilt grass and ferns waiting beneath the weeds, frogs suddenly visible in clear water, and another chorus waiting to begin. As one chorus ends, we aren't meant to tend to everything at once. We tend what we can, when we can, and trust that the rest will wait until we get there. Garden dilemmas. Ask Mary stone.com.
Mary Stone 11:09
I so enjoy our time together, and I hope you have as well. And if so, please share the podcast with a friend or two, so more can join and learn and grow in the garden of life together with us. It means so much to me, and it's such a joy to hear from you. So I encourage more of you to email me at askmary stone@gmail.com or through the social links. We are growing our community, and that brings such joy and happiness to me and to you. I can tell because I get more and more emails each week, and I thoroughly enjoy them. Until next time, enjoy the sights and sounds around you and tend what you can, and always remember to embrace the unexpected in this garden of life. See you next time. You can follow Garden Dilemmas on Facebook or online at gardendilemmas.com and on Instagram at hashtag MaryElaine Stone. Garden Dilemmas, Delights, and Discoveries is produced by Alex Bartling. Thanks for coming by. I look forward to chatting again from my screen porch, and always remember to embrace the unexpected in this garden of life. Have a great day.
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