The Annabelles VS The Bitch

Or is it The Bitch VS The Annabelles

Several years ago, maybe eighteen or so, The Annabelles were given a home in The Bitch’s garden. It was a nice spot, along the path to the shed, with the perfect mix of sun and very fertile soil. The Annabelles were hydrangeas and were beautiful when in bloom as their large white flowers put on a jaw-dropping show for several weeks during the summer.

For many years The Annabelles were well behaved as one would expect  hydrangeas to be because most of them are. You expect them to be nice mounds or shapely small trees. You expect them to stay in place and be one of the easiest-to-care-for plants of your garden. These particular Annabelles were supposed to be rounded shrubs of about 5 feet in diameter. But it turns out that These Annabelles were the give-them-an-inch-and-they’ll-take-mile type of hydrangeas so they began working their way under the large rocks that bordered the front of the garden. Then they pushed their way through the pea gravel of the walkway. And finally, they bullied their way between the stones of the rock-faced slope at the back of the garden plot. To put it mildly, they were running wild. They became harder and harder to manage, like teenagers or hippopotamuses (hippopotami). Keeping them in check was exhausting. It was becoming a job that the aging Bitch did not enjoy.

The plan was hatched by The Bitch late last fall when she went down to do a little cutting back. You know, clip off the dead flowers, maybe take the stems down a foot or so. However, as soon as The Bitch began trimming, something possessed her and she attacked The Annabelles with all the tools at her disposal, hacking and pulling and cutting and yanking, taking the aggressive old hydrangeas right down to the ground. Of course she knew that the assault would have to be continued in the spring because she still had the roots to contend with. 

Oh those damn roots!

By the time The Bitch got around to tackling The Annabelles in the spring, the plants had returned with a vengeance. Possibly hundreds, of eighteen-inch leafy green shoots were stretching stubbornly skywards from the formally bare patch. There were so many that it was difficult to count them or even make a guess. If she didn’t do something soon, The Annabelles would take over the world.

On day one, The Bitch began rolling the large rocks at the front edge of the garden back onto the walkway. Then she began digging and pulling and cutting the octopus like roots, some as thick as her shovel handle, only to realize how immense the job was going to be. The roots were thick. The roots were deep. The roots were tangled together making simple shovel movements impossible. She began moving all the free soil to a tarp, sifting through it as much as possible with her fingers to pull out any root bits that might come back to haunt her like zombies. Like goutweed!

On day two, The Doc joined The Bitch and they both dug and pulled and hacked to remove as much roots as possible. They were able to make some progress with the garden patch but there was still the rock face to contend with and all the roots with shoots growing between those stones.

On day three, The Bitch returned to the scene with the intention of slowly removing the rocks in small amounts, digging and pulling the roots then returning the rocks and starting another section. What was she thinking? How naive can one bitchy gardener be? It didn’t take long before The Bitch realized that she was going to have to remove the entire rock face of the slope, pull and dig the Annabelle roots then rebuild the rock face from scratch, or almost scratch. She had built it to begin with, but never in her wildest dreams did she think she would have to do it twice.

So this is where we end for today. The job is big. The job is time consuming. The job is a pain in the ass. Oh Annabelle, this Bitch wishes she never met ya. When this adventure is over, she has some beautiful, well-behaved mounds of grasses, that will display blues, reds and golds to take your place. She can hardly wait to give them their new home.

Thank you for reading.

Photo:  Jenn Stone

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