I Hate Mint: The 2009 edition

Seen close up, it doesn't look so bad. Johnny jump-ups are always pretty, of course, and the light green leaves of the mint set them off.

When you take a step back, though, it's much worse:


That's the northern edge of the newer half of my plot, and it's infested with mint. And I'm having flashbacks to the summer of 1996 or 1997 when the opposite side--the southern edge of the older half of my plot--looked just the same, a tangle of mint and Johnny jump-ups. I remember all the effort it took to rip the mint out, to follow the trailing roots to the next offshoot, my fingernails caked in dirt, and the frustration I felt when I saw a patch that had popped up somewhere else. "It's trying to rule the world," I despaired to anyone who would listen. (I wonder if they were calling me the "crazy mint lady" behind my back.) And then I cursed the friends who had planted it.

I wrote about my hatred of mint almost exactly a year ago, at some length, I must admit, and it is humbling to be back and saying the same thing. Last year, I might have said that by now, I'd have vanquished the mint. Or, at least, gotten rid of enough of it so that when I got to the garden, I didn't have to stop and heave a heavy sigh at the mere sight of it.

But alas, here I am again, cursing the mint.

After I took those photos, I began to rip the patch of mint out. I didn't get all that far--just a token gesture, really. But that's all you can really do with the mint. You can curse it and call it all the names you want, but it will just keep spreading, and you will just keep ripping it out.

I haven't planted any corn poppies at my house. On the one hand, I think they'd look lovely scattered across my lawn, but I fear that then I would never mow the lawn, and I'm already not the world's most diligent lawn mower to begin with. It's certainly possible that I'll change my mind about that, though.

But I can safely say that I'll never change my mind about mint. I don't care that it is nice in drinks, or in salads, or in Indian food. (There are even mint-flavored potato chips in India, which is not one of the better potato chip flavoring decisions, in my opinion.) It is a garden menace, and I'm not letting it anywhere near my house or my yard or my cats. Perhaps I should find a place to hang a proclamation of the "There Shalt Not Be Mint," variety.

In the meantime, I will go to the community garden, and I will sigh and swear as always, and then I will crouch down and begin the Sisyphean task of pulling out the mint once more. What else is there to do?

I Hate Mint

So, I spent awhile in the community garden today, pulling out mint.

When I inherited this plot from friends in the summer of 1996, there were some nice things in it--a lovely white peony, some orange (non day-lily) lilies, a thatch of very tall striped grass in one corner. Still, at some point every summer, I hate those friends because the summer before they gave up the garden, they planted mint. It's not that the mint was already there and they couldn't quite get it all out. No, they put it in. On purpose. And here I am, 12 years later, still pulling it out.

For the first summer or two, one end of the plot was taken over nearly entirely by mint and johnny jump-ups. But as I learned more about gardening and had more things I wanted to put in, I didn't want to lose the space, and so I began a campaign against the mint, which by then I was calling "the mint that wants to rule the world."

And then for a bunch of summers, I was able to keep the mint somewhat contained--there was still a patch at one end, where it had originally been. And then there was a little patch in the middle of the garden that I pulled out when I remembered to. But there was no sense of invasion, no sense that the mint was winning.

Except now it is. When I planted the peas, a month or so ago, I dug out a bunch of mint that had crawled underneath the pea fence and was attempting to colonize the other half of my plot, the one that's basically empty and where the utilitarian rows of vegetables grow. (Since the original half of my plot is a bit over-stuffed--you know, because I can't bear to pull out any of the corn poppies or larkspur that have self-seeded all over the place, not to mention the fact that for years I took any perennial anyone offered me--I try to keep the second half fairly clear, so there's actually room to put some vegetables in. )

In an interruption of my mint rant, I'll post some photos of my bipolar garden, all taken last summer.



The original half.
















The newer half.













And here they are both together, with the pea fence in the middle:


I've been slightly neglectful of the community garden of late--it's the torn between two gardens thing partly, but also the weird weather pattern, where the sunniest days are Weds. and Thurs., and weekends are cool and cloudy. (Then there's the fact that I had obligations on two sunny Saturdays that kept me away from both gardens.) I can't blame the weather entirely--maybe I've just become a lazy gardener. But I know that the longer I let the weeds go, the worse it will be to tackle them. And so, I spent a chunk of time over there this afternoon (wearing a wool sweater AND fleece!). I tried to clear some of the weeds on the empty side. I pulled out some nasty witch grass. But mostly, I pulled out mint. There was mint mixed in with the artemisia, mint overrunning the creeping thyme (which is itself overrunning the grass path next to the plot), mint settling itself into the bed with the garlic and the one where leeks and lettuce grew last summer. I dug and pulled and pulled and dug and followed the snaking vines as far as I could, but I couldn't get all of it.

After an hour and a half or so, I had to leave to get ready to go to a dinner thing. To show for my time, there was a big pile of mint and witch grass to be composted, and my hands were filthy, dirt under my nails. My hands did, admittedly, smell pleasingly minty after all that--the only nice thing I will ever say about the mint. But the mint is still winning, and meanwhile, all I can do is keep pulling it out and keep cursing my friends. I wonder, after 12 years, if there's some statute of limitations on the willful planting of mint. Because really, what I'd like is for them to have to pull it out, as a lesson. It seems like it might even be fair for me to sneak over to their house and stick some mint in, but I'm not that vengeful (I don't think). Goddamn mint.