Norwich bulletin., 1919-06-20
MOTHER NATURE AS SHE CONFRONTS
 THE FARMER

be such specially important critters in Natures eye as we are in our own.
 But to come back to our weeds. Last year I had small field in wheat At
 the time the wheat was sown I seeded
 down with timothy and clover. No rye was found in the wheat. The grass
 seed was of the re-cleaned class and
 contained practically no foul seeds.
 Yet this summer rye has come up
 thickly all over that patch. There
 wasn't a kernel of rye in the wheat or
 the grass seed sown; no rye. has been
 grown on the field for forty years; no
 rye was raised or any field within mile of it last season Yet there it is Where did it come from?
 An old farmer whem I once knew i used to aver with solemn emphasis that the earth was chuck plum full of. weed seeds to it's very center! He told of digging a sixty-foot deep well, the earth from the bottom. of which was, naturally, thrown on top of the exca- vated pile. And in lessn two weeks,, l that dirt brought up from sixty feet down, was jest covered with ragweed | and pigweed and wild mustardi'' It was his belief that Satan was directly i and personally responsible for this diffusion of weed seeds to an unknown { depth: that the arch fiend put 'em ! there just to make farmers trouble and
 work.
 i l can see how the winds or the birds
 might have brought the weed seeds to i his well dirt. but l cannot see how
 either winds or birds could have sown | rye thinly but evenly all over a two
 acre lot when there was not field of i rye within a mile of it.
 ! And weeds act so differently with l T ffC.,f >Was lecturer of the grange, I worked
 up a quack grass evening. We talked l quack-Srass for an hour; how to ham I dle it. how to kill it, etc. One slow i spoken old farmer in back seat l showed a little impatience as we com i parative youngsters told of our various devices for fighting the pest. Finally : it got so he couldn't Standlit any long CT. He rose and said that he used to i have two lots overrun with quack, and i that he got rid of it by simply letting it alone. He found that the more he cultivated the ranker it grew, so he just gave the lots up to it. let it have i, it's own way. an by gum, in less'n five
 years it had run itself out; didn't
 bother him no more.
 Now that old chap was perfectly honest man. When he reported what had happened with him we all knew it had happened, exactly as he told it, But it won't work so with me. As sit writing this can see a little corner
 of the upper garden through the open
 window. Twenty-Five years ago I tried
 to make it into a strawberry bed The quack smothered the berry plants the
 first year, it was so rank and lusty. From that time to this. the little patch
 has been left severely alone. And the
 quack stands on it, this minute, after
 twenty-five years opportunity to run
 itself out, shoulder high, with stalks as
 big as any timothy I ever saw. and
 every promise of continuing to live and
 thrive for twenty five years more 1 twenty five hundred perhapsi
 Since Nature was good enough tc
 eradicate her own quack for the bene-
 i fit of my old neighbor why shouldn't she be as good to me ? I give it up : She isn't, that's all know.
 | Fifteen years ago found q single clunnp of wild thyme growing in one o1 my pastures. Not knowing mucf about it's chara cter, but recognizing il as a new weed. I carefully dug the clump up and brought it home. where l threw it on a brush heap which was burned soon after But 1 must have been too late to foresta1l the spreading of the seed. Next year there were clumps scattered here and there al over the pasture, and now it has taker possession of twenty acres: has TUT out every other kind of vegetation, in cluding, of course, the wild grasses and is an utterly hopeless proposition ! It would cost more. at present labor rates, to eradicate it than the whole
 farm is worth. hope it will run itselt r out, as my neighbours quack did. But it isn't showing any tendency in thai direction thus far. Sixty years ago, when l used to weee onions and sage and carrots and the like--a sore fingered. bliStered kneeC . youngster, who had much rather have : spent the time swimming or fishing we had pussley and shepherds purse and ragweed and pigweed and a few , others of the old standbys to fight + But cat-foot. which is now one of my worst pests, was absolutely unknown So was the wild thyme of which I have written. So was the Orange hawk weed, which is now coming in thickly l So were Jobs Tears" Chickweet
 was almost as rare as hens teeth; nov it keeps me working nights and holi days to hold it in check
 There seem to be tides in the weet r world which cause different sorts t D ebb' and flow. as the decades pass. f Much the same as with bugs. Whel n l was a boy We never had heard of Q potato beetle: nor of a codling moth , nor of a corn borer; nor of an aspara V gus beetle. We have all these nev r ones now, and just as many of tn t striped bugs and the stinkbugs an <. | the eutWorms as we used to. Thos n old pirates don't die out as new specie q invade us.
 t What with new weeds and ne1 n blights and new bugs, there is hardl - a crop left which we can raise withou e having to fight for it.
 if And Old Mother Nature-Mother-i in s. law Nature she ought to be called e isn't at the end of her resources i IT pernicketiness, yet
 D Next year she'll have somethin ,t new to spring on us. Wait and see
 she doesn't!
 THE FARMER.