Beneath the Wraps

            To the best of my knowledge, nobody around here intentionally plants blackberries.             They grow like weeds.   Most people don't seem to like them.   They're not attractive plants.             When we first moved to Tri City, we would pick berries from an overgrown explosion down the street.   They were gone the following year.   But we did have the opportunity to hike our brown hill to get to them.             But now we have an opportunity to reach the blackberry goodness without having to leave our yard or climb the hill             They have come into our yard, I'm guessing by the wind.   They are starting to chock the lif...

I had once heard a commentary that if you kill a spider, at least three more will show up for its funeral.   My husband said that isn’t true.   But it sounds accurate to me. I went out to the garden on Tuesday.   I weeded so much of it.   I can actually tell the grass blades from the onions now.   But it’s not the naughty grass blades or even the net from this post that now give me trouble.   It’s the blasted pigweed that I wrote about in this post over a year ago.      It’s back – right after I got rid of it – I couldn’t believe the growth that had taken place overnight.   I kid you not.   It had completely grown back (and then some) overnight and I have come up with even more uncouth descriptions of the pigweed that seems to live up to my first paragraph – only a pigweed instead of a spider with over 500 funeral attenders.   Give me a break.   At first I did not realize that it was pig weed as I have...

    By no means am I a gardener.  Don’t know as I ever had the desire to be.  If I did, it was when I was younger.  Like grammar school younger.  And the sun didn’t seem to faze me as its heat wrapped itself around my body like an unwanted blanket – suffocating me.  I’d rather be indoors with the air conditioning and not pulling weeds in the garden.     It seems the wind has blown some grass seed into our garden.  And the miracle grow is doing wonders on the grass and the beans and peppers.  But the grass is not a part of our garden and so I have been pulling up blades.  I can dig up the roots (well, some of them) if they are in the isle of the garden, but if they are sprouting in the same row as the plants (or some still seeds) they can’t be dug up as well.       Every day there are blades of grass.  Everyday I tug at the blades and dig and rake. ...

          I once heard the following about an elderly woman with a very nice garden.  Someone had asked how she maintained without weeds.  She had set a goal to pull 15 a day.  I’m guessing she didn’t have to deal with pigweed.           I actually have two nicknames for the weed that springs back to life the minute it is pulled.  The more offensive name mentioned in the title of this post and “Rapunzel” – though I think it grows much faster than Rapunzel’s hair.  But unlike Rapunzel’s hair, there is absolutely nothing special about it.  It’s a weed.  A multiplying undying weed.           I will pull them up by their roots.  I will have a tremendous pile of these red-rooted pigweeds – more outside of the garden than inside.  It seems for every one I’ve pulled at least four to seven have grown b...