Everything Is Late, But Coming Along

Home in Late June

My main endeavor this summer has been to weed, since absent from the garden so long. While taking care of the vegetable plot, which if you will remember was planted hurriedly just before leaving town, I noticed some tomato fruits. Green, small to medium sized, but coming along. After all the rain you wouldn’t think I need to water, but they are in raised beds and it looks like I will need to give them a drink. Planted with a few pepper plants, which are not as far along as I’d like, but looking healthy, I gave the bed a dust mulch.

The Annabelle hydrangea is blooming her head off, one of the few things of note in my garden this year. In fact I can’t well contain her or get rid of her… she loves it here.

The bugs are intolerable, it makes work in the garden constrained to short increments of time. Sometimes the mosquitoes, sometimes little gnats that won’t leave your eyes alone. Maybe I should use swimming goggles to extend my worktime, what do you think? I do love weeding when it is hot and dry, though. It means sure death for those that are grubbed out. There was also some time spent pruning and trimming the spring flowering shrubs- better late than never, removing poison ivy from inside them…. hopefully will get to the roots later… once poison ivy gets a foothold it can be tenacious.

Many people, including myself, often dislike the chore of weeding, but as in housework, it isn’t the effort, but the result that is of such great satisfaction. To look over a freshly cleaned walkway, flower bed, or nicely trimmed shrubs makes for a good feeling… even when sticky with sweat and bothered by bugs. I don’t know how to translate that good feeling of being in touch with the earth, and yet playing a part in the care and control of it that makes gardening such a deeply passionate pastime. I know there is something of the happiness that comes from making the world, even a small corner of it a better place.