a little bit at a time
When I went out to the back 40 last night to plant strawbabies, I surveyed the damage done over the winter months. All I can say is "What a mess!"
I'm fighting a couple of battles today. One is weeds. I'm gaining ground but my first instinct was to be so overwhelmed and not knowing where to start that I just wanted to crawl back inside the house and call it quits. I'm tougher than that, though, so this morning, bright and early, I started someplace.
The other battle I'm fighting is the one of good intentions. It seems that I never have enough time or money to do all that I want to do. I've had a little to spend on the yard this spring which was such a blessing! It needed some attention and I'm very pleased with the way it's turning out. June, though, will not let me touch the flower beds. She let me pick out some flowers, but as for doing what I think needs done; she ain't havin' no part of it.
I got sent out to the strawberry patch. We've been trying to grow strawberries in this one piece of ground for years now. Four of the plants won't die, but they won't spread very much either. One died last night at the hands of a tiller. I did add a sprinkler head to the strawberry patch, so it will finally be properly watered, which I think was 90% of the problem in the first place. We bought plants and she sent me to plant them last night. I wanted to plant flowers.
Sometimes living with Miss June is like living with your mom. I got the "look".
This morning, she had it in her mind that the front flower bed is off limits to me and I needed to get my butt up and weed the raspberries.
Yes ma'am.
And it was ugly. Where there was bare weed-free ground last year, there was you name it among the raspberries. And there was not an option to use power tools here. There are baby raspberries under the weeds and I killed four of them whilst pulling weeds by hand.
In the back of my truck there are twelve bags of mulch. I'm on a mini-break, but as soon as I'm done with this, I'm back to the raspberries. I'm gonna mulch around them and see if we can prevent some of this from happening again. Besides, the oasis of red bark and raspberries will look nice in the middle of the garden.
I mentioned it's easy to get discouraged when there's so much to do. I got organized though and started with moving everything down to the grassy area so I can go on a killing spree tomorrow. I'll mount up the mower deck and run it over everything. That will knock most of it back down to a manageable size. Once that's done, then it's the plow to break it up, then the tiller, then raking up the debris. I have two piles near the apricot tree; one for green waste and one for the transfer station. The back 40 seems to have become a collection point for things that started out with good intentions but have just become crap.
My compost pile was one of those "good intentions". Those intentions have changed and are now co-mingled and fertilized. The compost pile is on its' way to becoming just that, instead of a collection of black bags full of leaves, stuff, and a ginormous pile of grass clippings.
That's where I started this morning, and once I got that done I moved up to the raspberries.
It's just like anything else, I suppose. It's overwhelming because it's a lot of work and there is only me to do it. Weeds grow anyplace; you gotta earn everything else. I'm working on that, one patch at a time. We're well-blessed with raspberries which are now spreading out to where they used to live before they tried to out-run the weeds. We will have a few more than last year and maybe with the mulch keeping the weeds down and water in, we'll be blessed with more and more plants. I'm hoping they'll grow like everyone else's and become so thick the chore will be to thin them out.
Well, that's all gang. Don't forget mom tomorrow.
I have two. I remembered them both!
I'm fighting a couple of battles today. One is weeds. I'm gaining ground but my first instinct was to be so overwhelmed and not knowing where to start that I just wanted to crawl back inside the house and call it quits. I'm tougher than that, though, so this morning, bright and early, I started someplace.
The other battle I'm fighting is the one of good intentions. It seems that I never have enough time or money to do all that I want to do. I've had a little to spend on the yard this spring which was such a blessing! It needed some attention and I'm very pleased with the way it's turning out. June, though, will not let me touch the flower beds. She let me pick out some flowers, but as for doing what I think needs done; she ain't havin' no part of it.
I got sent out to the strawberry patch. We've been trying to grow strawberries in this one piece of ground for years now. Four of the plants won't die, but they won't spread very much either. One died last night at the hands of a tiller. I did add a sprinkler head to the strawberry patch, so it will finally be properly watered, which I think was 90% of the problem in the first place. We bought plants and she sent me to plant them last night. I wanted to plant flowers.
Sometimes living with Miss June is like living with your mom. I got the "look".
This morning, she had it in her mind that the front flower bed is off limits to me and I needed to get my butt up and weed the raspberries.
Yes ma'am.
And it was ugly. Where there was bare weed-free ground last year, there was you name it among the raspberries. And there was not an option to use power tools here. There are baby raspberries under the weeds and I killed four of them whilst pulling weeds by hand.
In the back of my truck there are twelve bags of mulch. I'm on a mini-break, but as soon as I'm done with this, I'm back to the raspberries. I'm gonna mulch around them and see if we can prevent some of this from happening again. Besides, the oasis of red bark and raspberries will look nice in the middle of the garden.
I mentioned it's easy to get discouraged when there's so much to do. I got organized though and started with moving everything down to the grassy area so I can go on a killing spree tomorrow. I'll mount up the mower deck and run it over everything. That will knock most of it back down to a manageable size. Once that's done, then it's the plow to break it up, then the tiller, then raking up the debris. I have two piles near the apricot tree; one for green waste and one for the transfer station. The back 40 seems to have become a collection point for things that started out with good intentions but have just become crap.
My compost pile was one of those "good intentions". Those intentions have changed and are now co-mingled and fertilized. The compost pile is on its' way to becoming just that, instead of a collection of black bags full of leaves, stuff, and a ginormous pile of grass clippings.
That's where I started this morning, and once I got that done I moved up to the raspberries.
It's just like anything else, I suppose. It's overwhelming because it's a lot of work and there is only me to do it. Weeds grow anyplace; you gotta earn everything else. I'm working on that, one patch at a time. We're well-blessed with raspberries which are now spreading out to where they used to live before they tried to out-run the weeds. We will have a few more than last year and maybe with the mulch keeping the weeds down and water in, we'll be blessed with more and more plants. I'm hoping they'll grow like everyone else's and become so thick the chore will be to thin them out.
Well, that's all gang. Don't forget mom tomorrow.
I have two. I remembered them both!
Comments
Post a Comment