Musk Thistle | Life on a Colorado Farm

We have many, many weed here…some are just a pain, but others are really horrid. The invasive species are the worst….nothing likes to eat them, they sterilize the soil so only ‘they’ can grow, and (usually) they are ugly –Russian Knapp Weed, Canada Thistle are examples.

Randomly there is a weed that is just downright beautiful-but still a weed and still an invasive weed. I chop them down the second I see them start to form. Sometimes I miss one or so, before you know it…there they are.

The Nodding Thistle or also known as the Musk Thistle is one of those horrid weeds which is incredibly beautiful.

This one got by my shovel, so I took photos of it for you.

A beautiful weed

Now chopped off.

But I can assure you there are more out there! Invasive species have incredible survival skills.

Linda

They have arrived in all their terrible glory….Russian Knap weed….horrible stuff.

With all of the native plants destroyed the invasives have taken over. This hillside is the worst for Russian Knap weed. I thought about showing you the ugly Canada Thistle patches (which equal this patch of Russian Knap Wee) and the beautiful but every so hateful Musk Thistle (we all know people just like that….beautiful but very hard to be around).

There are some other weeds that I enjoy and am glad to see Milkweed (excluding the poisonous kind) and Golden Rod are two that come to mind as I’m writing this. But these are NOT growing where the other three are, because the other three are thugs and take over the spot they are growing in, acting like bouncers by kicking everyone one else out.

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I’m putting on leather gloves every other day and pulling up the poisonous types of weeds, bringing them back and burning them. The last thing we want is for the cows to eat something (next winter) that kills them.

The burn still makes me sad. And the farmer who burned everything is stalling on doing anything….so now the three farms are going to have to approach him as a group to get something done.

I was hoping that he would have been a better neighbor and handled everything to the best of his ability, instead of waiting and waiting and ignoring the whole problem.

He is to be pitied, but being a responsible person in life is to act responsibly.

Enough of this…onto a lovely sunny day!

Linda