Gardening the Wrong Way.

 I expect tomorrow at the gym I'll be pre-sore from all the weeding I've done today in the garden. That will make squats with 130# less than happy-making. My neighbor wanted some of my wild lettuce, so I just let it go hog wild. WILD. Some of them were about 7 or 8 feet tall. Ugh. My neighbor has an illness and needed the leaves to make a tincture for some sort of relief. I used the opportunity as an excuse to neglect them, and I have lived to regret that choice as the weeds have obscured many of the legit specimens in the garden, and even partly the porch and the front of my house. 

A rumbly thunderstorm woke me about 2AM today, and it went on until I fell to sleep about 5 or so. Something about the rain makes me feel content, and keeps me awake. I realized the few hours of rain this morning would make for ideal moisture in the soil to pull the wild lettuce today. This morning I had a few weed-pulling sessions. I put on thick leather gloves and went out to pull weeds in the hot and humid morning. I would pull for about 10 minutes and then rest and cool off. A few were so thick at the ground that I had to use a spade to pull them. They have coarse, thorny whiskers on the stalk, so the gloves kept my fingers safe from the poky bits. Still, it was quite satisfying when they'd break free from the earth, and I'd shake the excess soil from the root balls. Now the lawn is littered with the stalks. I'd already filled the garbage trolley from cleaning over the weekend. 

The progress on the house is encouraging, but it's such a huge task. Removing the tall weeds at the front of the house reveals how I need to clean the siding on the house itself. Maybe if I ignore the house dirt, I can get it obscured by another wave of wild lettuce soon. I must resist the temptation to neglect it all again. So much to do, but I'm getting there. 

My oak leaf hydrangea is the biggest and most beautiful it's been, so hopefully I'll have a photo of it to share here soon. Now that the weeds are gone, I've got about a million saplings to eradicate from the property.

Baby steps, right?