Digging Out Lungwort

Lungwort (Pulmonaria)

Over the last two summers, lungwort (pulmonaria) has taken over my garden. Lungwort is the little spring plant with the spotted leaves and pink, blue and white flowers that bloom in the spring. As a specimen plant, this early bloomer is delightful, but as a ground cover—all over the ground—it has taken residence where I did not plant it and do not want it.

However, I have let it grow—partly by intent and partly due to the fact that I have been physically under the weather for the last six months—and grow it has. My intent has been to dig out the lungwort (so named because previous generations thought the spots on the leaves looked like lungs and treated lung discomforts and diseases with this plant) and fill the wooden pathway down to the marsh at my son-in-law and daughter’s home named Turtle Creek Acres.

Neglect sometimes is an expedient strategy. In the case, the more lungwort that sprouted each year, the more lungwort took root each summer. Now there are not just solitary chipper pink and blue flowered plants waving in my spring garden, due to my physical inability to garden for two years, there are now huge mother plants gripping the soil, determinedly marking out their habitat.

David has been the determined gardener this year, leaving our bed early every morning before sunrise, to rake and haul and burn the leaves and debris and dried deadheads that have made our March yard look like a wasteland.

Click here, to learn more about the article.

To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

To learn more about Karen as activist, writer, and thinker, please click here.