Wrestling Match With the Tasty Chrysanthemum Leaf

What a lovely thought...last fall I ordered seed for something called 'Tasty Chrysanthemum Leaf' from the Oriental Seeds catalogue. How nice...fresh, tender greens from the Chrysanthemum family, supposedly a favorite in some Asian cultures, to be sprinkled in with your stir-fry....
But this herb bed didn't seem to take, and the winter grass kind of choked everything out. Until the Spring, that is, when the plants went 'SPROING' and, suddenly, I had this fabulous bed of what looked like, well...Chrysanthemums. Well, that's cool.

And then it was a hedge. And then there were a zillion blooms. We tried it in stir-fry...only once I'm embarrassed to say. And it was ok, if a little strange. But we enjoyed the novelty of just having it there. Maybe I didn't want to dedicate one of the herb beds to this particular plant, so I gathered seed in case I changed my mind later, and then we planned to just yank the plants up.

HA. No way. Even Will couldn't pull them out of the ground.



So I got the big loppers and headed out there early this morning.

I never know where the wasps have decided to hunker down, so you have to be careful. This is the South, and a wasp nest can be anywhere. If you hit a nest or grab one, they'll take out after you and you had better hope you are faster than they are. You don't cut things down in a hurry. You take your time and keep your eyes and ears open.

So, every few feet or so, I have to swing the loppers into the brush and step back to see if any wasps come flying out. The stalks are big and thick and close to the ground. Cut, cut, drag...Every ten minutes or so, I would stand there in the sun and consider quitting. But what's the point in that? If I can't win the fight with the Tasty Chrysanthemum Leaf, I'm not much of a gardener, am I?

I think all gardeners have this fantasy of meandering around the garden, seeing the butterflies and the bees and taking delight in this and that little thing...a bird, a volunteer sunflower. Yeah, right. That would be the first five minutes as you look around and decide which task you're going to tackle. Or in the last five minutes of daylight after the sun goes down. It's a good five minutes, either way...

note:
I saw an unusual fuzzy bright yellow caterpillar...then another one. I don't remember seeing these before. They were nesting right on the ground at the base of each plant. I wonder what they are. If the sun hadn't been so high, I would have taken a picture and posted it here so someone could tell me about them.