• Pulling weeds

    Date: 2010.07.06 | Category: News | Tags:

    Well, summer threatens to descend on me here!

    I am a 70 degrees Fahrenheit person.  That’s a wonderful type of day for me.  I don’t really mind 60 or 50 or colder.  I can always put on a sweater. But today the weather man says we are going to 80. And 90 tomorrow!  This after days of clouds and cool rain.  Suddenly, summer is here.

    I think I will welcome it a little bit.  My strawberries were not so good this year; big from the rain but not very sweet. It’s too late for most of the strawberries to enjoy the heat, but I still have lots of raspberries, so maybe some of them will ripen with some sweetness.  And maybe the heat will help me fight the mildew and fungusI’ve been seeing on some of my trees.

    I went out early in the day to get some weeding done before the day warms up too much.  And as I was crawling along in the gutter with my trowel and weed basket, I realized that I have several  kinds of neighbors.

    Some just call a greeting as they stroll by.  Sometimes they have dogs on leashes or are ‘power walking’.   Too busy to stop and talk; just a ‘good morning!’ from them.

    Then there are people who pause and chat for a bit.  They might eat a strawberry or two, or ask for some of the poppy seeds from my big poppies when the seed heads dry out.

    But the best are neighbors like Judy and Danielle.  They pause.  They start to talk. And soon they are down on hands and knees beside me, helping pull weeds as we chat.  There is something so companionable about shared work, even a simple task like weeding.  And some people simply cannot watch anyone do work without joining in. Those two neighbors are like that.  And in return, if I see Judy out weeding, I wander across and pull a few weeds with her while we catch up on the neighborhood news. And when I see deer in Danielle’s garden, pruning plants she doesn’t really want pruned, I quickly text her about them. 

    Danielle teaches botany, and always has more starts than she needs. So this year’s Early Girl tomato plants are courtesy of her. And I’m going to hit her up for some Begonia starts, too. She said she had lots of them.

    And those poppies that everyone admires and asks for the seed pods?  The seeds for those came from Danielle’s grandmother’s garden, about13 years ago, not long after I had moved in here.

    Gardens may not make a neighborhood, but they can certainly stitch one together.

    Robin