That Charlie is a REAL Creep (or so I've heard...)

As the days of spring bring us more and more plant and animal life, I'm drawn further into solving the mystery of "what lies beneath".

Yesterday, Easter Sunday, my mother-in-law walked me thru the yard and helped me to identify several plants we had growing but which I had little to no previous history tending. (I attempted this with my dad and brother on Facebook but was met with their typical goofiness...)

Hostas, flag plants (breathtaking when they will bloom!!), red maples, eunonymous, blue fescue, patches of Kentucky Bluegrass...

We discovered some old bricks covered by a vast field of a clover type of groundcover with violet trumpet shaped flowers. I had noticed this groundcover all around the yard. It surely is pretty, and it's also aromatic. I also remember seeing it quite a bit in my own yard as a child.

There was another variation of this groundcover, only the flowers were a lighter purple and were more fan-shaped. We saw far less of those.

My mother-in-law told me that we had....duh da daaaaa...Creeping Charlie. She said she wasn't 100% sure, but she felt pretty confident. And, according to her assessment of the situation, this was not a welcome visitor, but rather an invasive wildflower.

Well, my ears started to twitch and I had to practically lasso myself to the porch so as not to make a hasty, Internet-bound retreat. However, once we were inside, I was able to converse with the fam while I surfed from my phone. My poor mother-in-law - little did she know what can of worms (ha!) she had opened. Because, a little information goes a long way with me, and I've been accused of being an Internet Bloodhound.

Within minutes, as the family attempted to talk about things that most normal families talk about during a holiday get-together, I was interrupting the casual flow of the conversation dancing like a five-year-old who has to pee.

"Mom, Mom, MOMMMMMM...is this it? Is this what we saw??"

And yes, it was....Creeping Charlie.

The first site that I visited introduced "Charlie" as a friendly wildflower. Fragrant, edible, pleasing to the eyes, an easy to grow groundcover with a vast array of medicinal qualities. It belongs to the mint family. "Charlie" prefers moisture and shade. Well, our yard is a paradise for "Charlie"... With all the trees and tall houses, shade-loving plant life does quite well here.

But this left me confused. My mother-in-law had said, in no uncertain terms, that "Charlie" was a jerk. He squats on your territory and mooches off of other plant life. And that, once a resident, "Charlie" is nearly impossible to evict. This website (which I cannot recall because of the speed with which I was surfing) had described "Charlie" as the boy-next-door...

So I ventured to another website.

Confirmation.

There are two ways to look at "Charlie". As described above by the first website and then, as the next website clearly stated, "Charlie" really should go. Creeping Charlie is known to completely choke lawns, particularly those that are shady. The pretty little flowers that first display are just a tease, really, because they eventually fade into brownish clovers.

Various commercial products like Round-Up aren't even effective against this creepy chap. Borax or a chemical with a Borax component is the only way to go. It's highly toxic, smells horrible and will kill anything around it. That sort of goes against the grain (ha again!) of my organic thinking.

By the way, the relative of "Charlie" with the fan-shaped leaves turns out to be Creeping Thyme. This is viewed as a "friendly" groundcover, also easy to grow, and is very resilient to being walked on. Therefore, it is quite good to grow in between the bricks on patios or sidewalks, sort of like you would use moss.

So, I will have to debate on this to see if "Charlie" will go or if we'll let him stick around for a while. Certainly he doesn't detract from the beauty of the house (he actually enhances it with a naturistic aesthetic).

So, some of my first gardening mysteries have been solved.
The news is a mix of good and bad, but it really depends on how you look at it.