MiracleStun: For the Overexuberant Garden!

Okay, I'm not getting enough validation on facebook from my so-called friends, so I'm resorting to blogging. (I know, so shallow!)

It's spring here -- late spring to be honest -- and it's landscaping time again. How I love gardening!! The fresh smells of dirt, the green shoots on plants assumed dead since they went leafless months ago. LOVE!

I love it up north, mainly. Here, it's just selective plant homicide. (Vegicide? Herbicide?) I have become the Marquess de Sod -- seeking the disciplined landscape.

First came the weeds. Dollarweed, heart-leaf nettle, crabgrass, chick weed. All of them in my perennial beds. ("OH, put in perennial beds -- you 'll never mow it again!" Sure! I'll be too busy ripping up weeds for that anyway!)

At least only one of the weeds is toxic -- the heart-leaf nettle. Strange, but the plant's sting is often compared to fire ant bites. Quelle coincidence. Seems the fire ants "farm" aphids in the bushes I'm pruning. Yeah. They stung me between my shoulder blades where I can't reach them. Nasty creatures.

It's a jungle out there... So, for your amusement, I present "Pruning a Year's Growth Off the Florida Privet":

That's right, a year's growth. I'm trimming them back down to five feet tall -- like the bush on the far-right of the picture.  "Grows to ten fee tall" my ass!

See?

Seriously, I'm wondering what I can put on it to stunt its growth. Sort of an anti-fertilizer. I don't want to kill it -- just stunt it. I can see it now: MiracleStun, for the overexuberant garden!

Just assume everything's a weed.