The Return of "Weed a Week"

I'm sure everyone has been waiting with baited breath for the next installment of "A Weed a Week."  I, on the other hand, haven't been very interested in blogging recently.  I'm not sure why, but I have a love/hate relationship with my computer.  On the one hand, it's my connection to the larger world.  On the other hand, when I find myself sucked in for hours I resent the lost time.  Resisting the siren song of the Internet causes a constant internal conflict.  

So, at last, our next weed is either Henbit Deadnettle or Purple Deadnettle -- I think it's probably Purple Deadnettle.  They look very much alike, and they're closely related, but the Purple Deadnettle has pointier leaves and the leaves are grouped closer together on the stem rather than spread out along its length.  Either way, they're members of the mint family with square stems and opposite leaves.    

The young leaves are edible in salads and as potherbs (plants whose leaves, stems, or flowers are cooked and eaten or used as seasoning).  Medicinally, deadnettle is supposedly good for reducing fevers and as a stimulant.  A tea made with the leaves is said to be a laxative. 

I haven't seen it mentioned in my research but, in my opinion, this weed is very sneaky.  Near where the stem emerges from the ground, it has a weak spot.  If you attempt to remove the plant by pulling, it comes up easily but leaves the root behind to fight another day.  Fortunately, it's very susceptible to Round-Up.  :)   

In other gardening news, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.  I planted some Johnson's Blue Cranesbill (Hardy Geranium) in my garden a few years ago.  This year I noticed little leaves coming up that looked like hardy geranium all over my garden plot.  "Yay!" I thought.  "The Johnson's Blue has self-seeded and now I have LOTS of them."  This conclusion was reinforced by a trip to the garden store where a leaf was identified as hardy geranium and the Internet where I learned that Johnson's Blue is a prolific self-seeder.  So, I've been nurturing a whole bank of hardy geraniums and anxiously waiting for them to begin flowering.  I've been fertilizing them and  pulling or killing anything that threatened them. 

Finally, yesterday I saw the first buds.  They're tiny pinkish flowers, not large elegant blue blooms.  I did a little research and found that what I've been nurturing so carefully is more likely to be Cutleaf Geranium, which is considered a weed.

 

Still, they're green and they do have flowers -- even if they aren't the ones I expected -- and they may smother out other weeds, so I guess I'll keep them for the time being and see what happens. 

Today's good thing is my knockout rose, which has suddenly burst into full bloom.  I was enviously watching everyone else's knockout roses and wondering why mine wasn't doing anything.  Apparently, it was marshalling all of it's energy for one big pop -- sort of like a firework bursting all at once.  One day it was bare and the next it was a solid mass of red blooms. 

 

Andy the angora rabbit turned 9 years old on May 3rd and apparently decided to celebrate by coming down with a case of sore hocks.  Rabbits usually have a soft pad of matted fur on the bottoms of their feet that sort of act like felted shoes.  If  their feet become irritated, they can lose this covering and their feet become sore, inflamed, and possibly infected. 

Annette, God bless her, has been helping me deal with the poor old fellow.  I've been treating his feet with antiseptic and, of all things, preparation H ointment, and bandaging them -- much to his dismay.  He seems to enjoy the having the cool antiseptic dabbed onto his sore feet and the soothing ointment.  It's the bandages that he objects to! 

This morning he was a love when I doctored him.  After I disinfected his feet, I sat and petted him for a while and he fell asleep curled up in my lap with the weight off his feet.