We're Awfully Industrious

So...

I had a tremendously good time visiting with everybody down Island today---going out for lunch and visiting with Pol and all.

But although the morning was all fun and games and shopping for underwear, in the afternoon, when Tai followed me home, we ended up in my garden for a spot of weeding.

Poor thing.

The wages of being a houseguest at Spider Girl's are that you must work in the garden, you see. Luckily my friend appeared to enjoy herself. Her prescence definitely made the work go faster.

When I was a kid, my parents had a huge vegetable garden, a herb garden, berry bushes, flower-beds. It was huge. My brother and I spent a lot of time weeding in that half-acre. And quite a lot of time bemoaning our plight. My dad claimed that weeding built character, but we were convinced this was patently untrue.

And then my friend Pol(age thirteen) would come over to my house and sigh, "Oh, I wish I could garden too..."

She would happily join me in the corn-patch under the hot sun and weed happily away. Ah, friends: you just wish they'd always be there for you, chatting away merrily and making the job seem fun.

Garden gloves. Check.
Pointy dandelion-killer stick. Check.
Adear industrious friend to talk to. Check.
Basket to throw weeds in the general direction of. Check.

Tai observed my weeding technique with interest :I like to weed fast and furiously and I toss the weeds behind me with abandon. Some land in the basket but most make a little trail along the lawn's edge behind me as if a very localized and miniature tornado had travelled along tearing weeds up as it went. Especially if I'm mulling something over in my head. The more I ponder a problem, the faster the weeds fly. Very therapeutic.


I've recently developed a new weeding plan.

Before, I would walk about the garden, scanning for the biggest weeds or the areas that needed the most attention. I'd flit here and there, doing a little work here and a little work there, but at the end of an hour I'd look around and it would never look as though I'd gotten much accomplished, even though I'd filled several baskets with garden debris.

Now I start in one garden section and move from one side to the other, methodically removing anything unsightly and then turning the earth over with my little garden fork so the earth looks tilled and crumbly and dark. I don't go on to another spot till I'm happy with the one I'm on.

It's a little nit-picky, but it's working for me. The garden is starting to really look good. It doesn't have a lot of things in full bloom except for violets and daffodils and some camellias, but as Tai put it, "I love it when the garden is in the green and waiting..."

I know what she means. All the plants are popping up and stretching out and everything is just breathless, waiting to grow and explode into bloom.

Lovely.

We worked our little tails off, Tai and I!

See how my friend was overcome with exhaustion on my garden bench!

Just as we finished hauling the last basket to the Weed Pile of Doom, the sky opened and the rain began to pour. We retreated to the shelter of my front porch steps and sat watching the garden as the rain hit the ground. The most lovely, fresh green smell rose into the air.

Delicious. Freshly-mowed lawn. Wet dirt.

Tai is planning on staying a whole week in town here. Hmmm....I wonder how many more hours of chores I can get out of my dear friend. (Heh, and she cooked dinner for us later too!)