Hey Honey I Found the Garden

 

        This morning I decided I could wait no longer. It was time for a serious session of weeding the garden. 

        I do enjoy gardening, but I'm not always as diligent about weeding as I should be. My only excuse this time is that I had to wait for the peas and carrots to get a bit bigger so I can weed around them. Also it had been raining on and off for the last week. 

        This morning I officially ran out of excuses. Time to go out and pull weeds. I dressed in some older clothes and a ratty pair of sandals, filled my water bottle, grabbed my phone and headed into the garage. I got a hand spade and a tool that I refer to as the claw. Since there were a lot of weeds, I was going to need both tools to get at the roots. 

        I started on the vegetable side of the garden as it was in the worst shape. The weeds had grown up so much that I could not see some of the plants. I weeded around the peas and carrots. The rabbits have been chewing on the pea plants and one entire row is gone. I decided that I would plant more in the next couple weeks. Next week it may be too hot to try to plant anything,  The carrots looked good although only half of them came up. I decided that I would plant a few more of those as well.

        I yanked out handfuls of grass and other weeds shaking the dirt off them. The I put the weeds on the lawn next to the garden. Once I'm done weeding, C weill rake the weeds up and put them in a pile on the edge of our lawn.

        There is something oddly satisfying about pulling weeds. I don't use gloves when I weed as I like to get my hands in the dirt. There is also a sense of accomplishment and instant gratification seeing the ground clear of weeds. It also satisfies a need to have control over something. I'm not normally a control freak, but something in me really likes being able to do whatever I want with this patch of ground. I can't prove it, but even the plants seemed to be relieved when the area around them was clear.

        The basil plant looked good so I sent a text to a friend to let her know she was welcome to harvest some if she wanted. The pepper plant look healthy although there was no fruit on it yet. The tomato is growing well. There is fruit on it but nothing is ripening. I was pretty worried about this until I saw a patch of red. One tomato was definitely turning red.

        Once I was done with the vegetable side, I turned to the flowers. I cleared the weeds away from the snapdragons. I had to be careful as I didn't want to pull the flowers up. There wasn't much weeding to do as I had lots of overgrown daisies. I also had to be careful as there were bees feeding on some of the flowers and I didn't want to disturb them. I noted that the four o'clocks I planted had come up and were growing well. The bachelor buttons that came up looked good. Next year, I think I'll clear away some of the daisies and plant more flowers like bachelor buttons. 

        I was tired and covered with dirt when I finished. My efforts were well worth it. We can see all of our plants and I have more space to grow more seeds if I want.  Well worth the effort. Now off to find something to kill the Japanese beetles attacking our climbing rose.....