Weeds & Stuff

So far, I have only shown you the nice pictures of flowers and scenes in my yard. Before you get to thinking that I have these really great looking gardens, here are my "confession" pictures--the things I have never shown you before.

Here's my vegetable garden. I'm sure things would be growing much faster if the weeds weren't stealing all the nutrients and moisture from the soil. One of the concepts of dividing the garden into sections was that I would weed a section at a time and that would break up the weeding chore into manageable segments (kind of like dusting one room at a time--another chore I hate and almost never do!)

As you can see my theory hasn't worked. See that big thistle right next to a tomato plant?

The center sections containing onions and leaf lettuce aren't quite as bad as the rest because I just planted them a couple weeks ago and those sections had been covered with weed-barrier cloth till I was ready to plant.

OK, it's only going to get worse....this is my asparagus patch. If you look really close you can actually see some asparagus plants in there....yes, they're right next to that large-leaved, 3 foot weed on the right side of the picture. How do these things grow so fast??

Here's my butterfly garden behind the garage. I used the weed whacker yesterday to cut away all the tall grass growing around the rock border. At least I can see the rocks again now. Next I need to actually get into the garden and pull out the rest of the grass (no, those aren't daylily leaves blowing gracefully in the front--that's all grass!) I've got a spray bottle full of vinegar all ready to spray these weeds to kill them, but I always run out of day before I run out of projects (know the the feeling?)

I also weed whacked all this tall grass that had grown up over the rock border under the deck. It looks pretty good now. Again, a little strategically applied vinegar would work wonders in this area.

OK, now that I've shared these horrifying scenes, I will pledge to you to get them cleaned up in the next week and show you photographs of my accomplishments next Monday. My brother and his family are coming for a visit next week and we're planning a family picture in our backyard, so I want everything to look nice for their visit. Nothing like company coming to get serious about sprucing things up.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ & Stuff ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In addition to 3 gray squirrels in my yard, a little red squirrel also showed up over the weekend. He's a pretty clever little squirt. When I came home from work today, I found he had discovered the tube feeder filled with the delicious cardinal mix (containing sunflower hearts and shelled peanuts). The cage was designed to keep grackles out of the feeder, but nothing stops a determined red squirrel. The tray provides a perfect spot to sit and dine for this little rascal. I finally chased him out, figuring that if he ate too much, he would become too fat to squeeze out through the holes anymore.

So cute and yet so naughty!