“Where will you begin?” she asked.
“At the beginning, I guess.”
This sign was posted over our shed door. The weeds are indeed laughing. Two hours after the last puppy of Irish’s litter was adopted, in rolled the van with six more! I can’t show them to you due to a promise we made to the kind human who brought them to us. She saw that they were in need and intervened. We won’t give her up as she may yet return with more.
Needless to say, my hoped for return to the garden was again delayed. And the weeds took full advantage. The blueberries were overrun, the paths were overtaken, crabgrass invaded, and the garden shed disappeared in a mass of cobwebs.
Maria refused to weed the herb garden bed; she said that it was all to be gone or she was washing her hands of it. I couldn’t bear to see it all dug up and sitting empty; we have months to go before the winter. So it has been reclaimed as a community bed. Let the whining begin.
As the last litter numbers dwindled over the course of a week, I was able to spend a little more time in the garden. Bit by bit, it is getting there. And with our last two little fluff balls now safely home, the garden is mine ours. And the weeds? Well who is laughing now?!
The Dahlias are beautiful.
The blueberries are once again peacefully co-existing with the California poppies and smothered in the pine needles they love.
The grapes are still producing…in September!
And as our rivers are still full from our long wet winter, I am watering, watering, watering to bring the garden back to life.
Now that the weather is beginning to cool, the gardeners, too, are making their return. Maria is planning her October display, Dee cleared out the daylilies,
Rob rebuilt the leaf mulch container for fall,
and Ina cleaned the garden shed!
Puppies are a joy – and they need what they need when they need it. Many of their new families stay in touch and I delight in seeing the pictures of them growing as fast as the weeds in the garden. (This is Mocha with his new big brother.)
I am so proud of them. I miss them a tiny bit. Still, I am happy to be back in the garden.
