Looking for beauty among the weeds

Because it is the least I can do with my ever so slightly overgrown garden.  I’m working on a bit of a project that has torn me from my garden for days on end.  I’m not disappointed with this project, in fact I am really excited by it and enjoy every moment crafting it together.  The only problem is it comes with a tight time line and so I find myself slavishly working away inside, not out there in the garden getting dirt under my nails.  In fact, at this point I could probably go for a manicure and not die of shame.  But to be completely honest, I like having dirt under my nails.  It marks me as a gardener and that is how I want to be known.

I love the lovely geometric design of these fat grass seed heads, but I’m not so much in love with the way they are lolling all over my potatoes. I think these need to become chicken food immediately

These are easy enough to remove and I should get onto it ASAP as the seedy bit seems to separate from the stem a tad to easily. But they do look lovely as they dance in the breeze.

Every so often I just have to leave my office and dash out into the garden to just be.  To absorb sights, sounds, smells and tastes offered up as a reward to all the hard work I’d put in months ago.  Time in the garden refreshes me.  I don’t have to do anything, which is just as well as I don’t have the time.  Yet every ounce of my being would love to linger longer and pull weeds.  There are so many and I know you are supposed to pull them while they are tiny so they are easier to remove and don’t set seeds in my previously weed free beds I have worked so hard to create over many a season.  But some things can’t be helped.

Dandelion – A wish or a weed. It is a wish only if you blow it down wind of my garden,

Willow weed – such a pretty shade of pink and it loves my moist yet well aerated soil. It can be a bit of a problem in pasture and large farm crops. But it is just an annual and in my small garden easy to pull out.

So have had to train myself to look at them in a different way.  They are all plants after all and I do like plants, that is why I’m a gardener.  And they do say a weed is just a plant in the wrong place.  But they also say one year’s seeds is seven years’ weeds.  I am so torn with weed driven angst.  I am willing yet not able.  There is the desire but not the time.

Added to that many of the crops are due to come out and are lingering in the throes of a swan song.  On the whole the garden is in dire need of a jolly good spring clean…  in autumn.  There are earless corn stalks that give a satisfying rustle in the breeze as their leaves stiffen and turn to a golden hue far removed from the brilliant greens of early summer.  Powdery mildew has all but stifled the cucumbers and it is probably asking way too much of them to except anymore produce from them.  The beans are drying on the plant and beginning to rattle in their pods.  But that is ok, I want it like that.  These are my kidney beans that will enrich my chilli con carne in the cold winter months – I can hardly wait.

Black Nightshade – I’d swear this wasn’t there last week… This is my most prolific weed this season and has sprung out of nowhere. I really do need to tackle these beasties – and they are easy to pull out, because they are quite toxic. The upside is they are distantly related to tomatoes so its prolific presence in my garden shows it is a fab place for tomatoes to flourish

Ink Weed has such dainty little flowers that turn into the most dramatically deep purple berries. But as lovely as it looks – it can’t stay. Once again quite toxic so it and it’s enormous tap root needs to go before it scatters its zillion seeds everywhere.

I really do need to put some time aside to give the garden some love, ingrain some dirt into the crevices in my fingers and restore order.  It will be a marvellous event.  I’ll mark it in my diary.  I’ll have a date with my garden and fall in love with it all over again after period of neglect. We were meant to be together.

Come again soon – the garden needs me and I need it – there will be action.

Sarah the Gardener  : o)