I won' t give up---- most likely ---- but again this year I learned that if you do it, DO NOT EVER say I will get it next time.
I weeded my north garden and trimmed the tomatoes so it no longer looks like one giant bush.
I have been out in the heat and humidity enough this summer that that does not really bother me except I sweat so hard my shirt is literally a wet rag while due to allergies, and anti-allergy medicine is worse that just constantly blowing my nose, I carry a rag with me which gets so dirty I eventually prefer my shirt sleeve.
Anyway.
The north garden has been a lot worse but I had not paid attention due to other things to my south garden, which is three times bigger and has six times as many weeds.
Thankfully it had rained down there that morning. Now weeding in muddy black gumbo is not fun but the weeds came up easily.
My other half helped me for an hour, which I greatly appreciated but as I did it I remembered my dad saying if you plant the garden you are going to take care of the damned thing and part of me wished I had let it go but I remembered in the few years I did not plant the whole garden I still had to weed the WHOLE garden.
I weeded for five hours on my hands and knees, often sitting on my buttocks as my one knee will be fine till suddenly I feel something in it move. It does not hurt but I know I just screwed it up. It usually will be fine for another day or two and then just standing up is not fun.
I put getting as much done as I could, over common sense. I think probably due to the softness of the wet dirt so far my knee has not let me know how stupid I was. If it pops when I bend it a certain way I know I am in pretty good shape but when it does not pop it is a different story.
I got half of the vegetable garden done, but the rose and flower garden are still untouched.
I filled up one of the big green recyclable containers the city supplies and a big blue two handled container which used to be for bottles and cans. I quit till I can get back and finish as my other half said if I did not come I could walk back, fifty miles. (Many years ago, we go into it, in the car, about half way. I pulled over got out and hitch-hiked home.)
As they only pickup every two weeks, I may do as I have done in the past and dig a large hole in a bare spot where, for some reason, nothing came up is and bury them.
The weeds were mostly grasses and purslane although I have Canadian Thistles that are a moving problem.
I wrote in another thread that purslane helped keep the ground moist, well, in the rare bare spots the soil was wet but not muddy. Under the purslane some times it was genuinely muddy, water dripped off of my fingers but that simply made it easier to pull them up. If the ground were not wet, the Crab Grass would have been a serious problem pulling as even in the wet soil I sometime had to brace myself to get enough torque to pull the whole root ball.
I filled up the blue tub and dragged it over to dump into the big green one. I did not realize till I picked it up just how heavy that stuff was. I can still do one hundred pounds in a military standing press ten times but I struggled to pick it up and broke one of the handles off when I lifted it.
I figure IF I still put up with annoying situations like this I am probably not going to quit any time soon but I will consider quitting probably five hours for every ten I put into planning next years garden and next year I WILL NOT put off till another day what needs to be done TODAY.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As an aside, as I weeded, I could also squash the potato bugs that this year are very bad and I simply have not had time to deal with them.
Last year they came and went away I think due to a large presence of Lady Bugs but this year I saw no Lady Bugs and wasps and bees are few and far between.
On a warped good note, I think the potato bugs have actually killed or greatly reduced the yield of some of the volunteer potatoes that actually are more of an annoying weed than blessing, which with the fact I have waaay more potatoes than I will ever use, is kind of a warped blessing.
