The Clean Handed Months are Over

Today was my favorite type of day -- a very sensory day. The chill and musk of the damp fog, the dark smell of the earth, the sweet smell of tender shoots, the tang of gasoline, the use of muscles that haven’t been used in months, bees sounding like bombers in the alder trees and then finally the sun – the sun!

I spent most of the day cursing myself for letting the garden get this atrocious with weeds. The garlic that I planted was being swallowed up alive by a curtain of green intruders. I couldn’t even find my lettuce until I plucked away some of the unwanted friends. After an extensive inner monologue of swearing and excuses I got down to business.

I knelt, I sat, I wallowed, I squatted, I stood and I Hula Hoed. There really is no way to easily weed a 1350 square foot something that looks a bit more like a lawn than a garden. I would have loved to turn it all under with the tractor but I wanted to preserve the garlic, lettuce, leeks, onions, artichokes, garbanzo beans and beets that all currently exist. Luckily, all of these little guys exist on only one side of the garden.



Exposing garlic on the left and hidden garlic in the upper right.



In this picture you can see the freshly weeded garlic on the left and in the upper right corner you can see what it used to look like and what still needs to be weeded.

After I got into it, it wasn’t so bad after all. It was fun to get my hands in the dirt again after all these clean-handed months. It’s mindless work but sometimes that’s when you get the best thinking done. If you can imagine, I was thinking a lot about weeds. I was mostly wondering why it had to be such an ongoing battle. Then I thought, hmm maybe just go with the flow and let the weeds hang out with the vegetables…naw. But I think one thing that really struck me was that if weeds are an example of how resilient nature can be, I mean because I was totally destructive to their habitat, then maybe there is hope for healing. I fight these guys tooth and nail and they always come back. After all, the bees did!



Bees happily buzzing outside of their hive.

 

Here is what all the buzz was about - White Alder pollen.



With a feeling of optimism and as a second attempt at success for my cold weathered vegetables, I put in some more garlic, onions, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, beets, leeks, turnips and poppies just for fun.

 

After about 6 hours of weeding, I was ready to let the rototiller come in for the kill on the barren second half of the garden. Even yet, I still felt quite accomplished.

Rototilled soil on the left and hand pulled weeds on the right.



Parsley that wasn't killed by the heavy frost and...



Beets that are doing well despite a few bug bites.

I hope next weekend brings some more planting opportunities! I got some heirloom tomato seeds as a birthday gift and I so want to plant them indoors.

For now I show restraint!

Daphne