I just pruned a weed.

Sammy-Mae

Yep I had to prune a weed to put my garden hose away.  My brothers and father have been fixing up a shed for us and they have been using the hose a lot.  They never seemed to put the hose away and I couldn't figure out why, it's so not my dad's style to leave things out like that. So I was weeding around my house and garden shed so it looked nicer even though our lawn needs serious mowing (please stop raining every single time DH is home during daylight hours!)  I came to the spot in the back of the garden shed where the hose gets hung up.  Ummm ya I figured out why my brothers and dad weren't putting the hose away. There were several 6 foot tall thistles.  

Thistles and stinging nettles are the banes of my existence they grow everywhere in our yard.  The previous owners of our house planted scotch thistles on purpose in one of their gardens (she liked the flowers).  I guess they forgot how horrible these things are to get rid of from the rest of the yard.  They root really deeply too so you can't just pull them out.  You have to dig them out and this is for the small ones.  The trunks of the big ones I just pruned down to stumps were like 3 inches thick.  DH is going to have fun digging up the little stumps in the backyard.  They have to go.  I hate these things.  And unless you have gardening gloves made out of Kevlar you can't avoid getting stabbed.  

katiesue55419

I can totally appreciate this post!  Stinging nettles are AWFUL! I always seem to grab them, open handed and without gloves. As far as the thistles, when I worked at my university's student run organic farm, we just cut them down religiously before they could flower. The land was only the organic farm for a couple of years by the time I was there and there were way too many thistles to dig as the ground hadn't been in cultivation before we got it. After a while, they started to die out since they were constanly getting robbed of energy by being cut. Way easier than digging!! So I say keep pruning away

Sammy-Mae

Stinging nettles are the worst because they look so innocuous.  Like "oh it's just another weed I'll just pull that sucker out and.... sonofa... great another nettle now my hand is both numb and on fire."