This morning in the humidity, I pulled three bags of weeds out of the rear garden. The strangle weed – a vine that grows, well, like a weed – is absolutely everywhere, and it’s important to get it down before it seeds out and then dries. That’s the problem I’m having right now, because last year, some of it went too far along, seeded, dried, and gave me the masses of it now. The weeds in the raised rows themselves are the usual assortment of that vine, plus garden spurge, with its little puffballs of seeds, mimosa weed, with its chamber of seeds on each leaf, nut sedge, and other grasses. It seems each year I get behind although I tell myself I won’t, and each year I wind up with overrun rows toward the end of the season. It isn’t that I mind weeding per se: it’s a great, mindless sort of job to do while thinking over plot points and scenes for whatever I’m writing. I do mind that I can’t quite seem to stay on top of it better. That has to change, and it will be on my mind as I continue my quest to make this month the one where every bed is weeded in a timely enough fashion that by the time I reach the end, the ones done earliest will not once again be completely overrun.
There are some tomatoes still out there, buried under the weeds. We did not have a good tomato (or cuke) season this year, but some of the indeterminate tomatoes are alive and flowering. I’ve no idea which varieties they are, given all that have died or were pulled out. It will be a nice little surprise for us, assuming any of their fruits make it to maturity.
And from here? Well, I make plans for next spring, and make it a mission to keep on top of things better than this year.