Oxalis: If You Can't Beat It, Enjoy It

    Oxallis probably is the scourge of every gardener in Albany, as well as most of Northern California. Every fall I promise myself I will get out and pull it up as soon as the first clover-shaped sprouts appear. Some years I even put down ugly black plastic or news papers, because regular mulch doesn't work on this pirate of the weed world. Each year I do a good job of weeding and mulching for a while, until something happens like: rain, the flu or the ennui of winter, then this yellow plague gets ahead of me.

    For every flower there is a bulb growing underground sucking up nutrients that my tomatoes or lettuces will soon need. Arrrgggg, I howl. Sure I could leave them, however in late July, oxalis just suddenly dies off leaving me nothing but patches of dry, dirty-yellow straw all over my yard.

   There are some good things to say about sour grass, as I use to call it when I was a kid. I would pick it and suck the stems for their puckery sour juice. Also, it is pretty and bright in the dark of winter.

 So lovely, in fact, that we use to let it grow until Easter to create a whole lot of  fun and pretty places for egg hiding. Our second egg hunt each year after the City of All Bunny's Egg Hunt. To an ex-midwesterner, where it may snow on Easter, an outdoor egg hunt seems magical. Not like the ugly magic trick that these *@&%# weeds play by coming up, year after year, when I don't even plant them!

   This year I proclaimed, "If I can't beat it, I might as well enjoy it" and went out and photographed the sour grass in my backyard. After the photo shoot, I went to town and pulled out all that devilish weed long before Easter.