There is no such thing as a day off in the garden. If you are not yet a gardener, be forewarned – gardening is not for the faint of heart, or back. That said, the rewards are beautiful and often delicious.
I am working on the vegetable garden finally, now that things have warmed up and it’s stopped raining. Unfortunately that meant the weeds got a really good head start.
I was about 1/3 of the way through at this point – can you see the mounting pile of pulled weeds over the fence? The purple flowers are what we used to call “puff balls” when I was a kid; they are like dandelions on steroids. This specimen was 3-1/2 feet tall!
It took me a whole afternoon to get through half the plot and pull the weeds out. Another thing about gardeners is they rarely if ever have a temper – pulling weeds might be some of the best anger management therapy around.
Tilling our soil is like digging in cement at the beginning of the season, so this year we decided to get smart and just put some more “good dirt” on top.
In comes 3 cubic yards of Garden Mix from Dogwood Nursery, to the rescue!
Another afternoon was spent getting the rest of the earth tilled and the dirt moved into place. We finished by laying the sprinkler lines, and toasted with cocktails to our good luck that no hoses had leaks and we could quit for the day.
So now all I have to do is plant the veggies. Writing all this down I realize that sounds a bit ridiculous. I’m not exactly selling this to a newbie, am I ?
One last note: even herbs can get to be more work than you expect. Be careful what you wish for.
My herb patch is in the foreground – notice the wild grass and the lemon balm? This is despite me digging out the weeds every spring.
I have come to love the more wild style that is euphemistically known as an English garden but every year I make my “notes to self”. This year’s addition is to plant lemon balm in a container. It has infiltrated every other herb growing in the patch.
May your labours be in love as mine are – it’s the best revenge, to love what you do.
Filed under: food, garden, summer
