{"id":1228,"date":"2012-05-30T17:48:14","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T16:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/?p=1228"},"modified":"2012-05-30T17:48:14","modified_gmt":"2012-05-30T16:48:14","slug":"the-garden-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/the-garden-again\/","title":{"rendered":"The garden again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It’s spring. The weeds are back in force. But somehow this year I just can’t get myself too riled up about them. It’s a combination of things:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I’ve finally hired Oscar to deal with my garden overload. It came down to Oscar or tennis, and I chose Oscar. I look at the weeds and say “Oh, I must remember to tell Oscar to deal with that next time he comes.”<\/em> Next time I see Oscar, though, he’s limping and I can’t understand his French any better than I did last time. I try to communicate about the weeds, but he’s obviously in pain and very busy so they remain. For the time being.<\/li>\n
  2. I’ve decided that the horrible ones with the impossible-to-pull-out roots are hopeless. They win. I pull the stems off when I walk past them, and accept the fact that I will be doing this well into the autumn as they continue to grow back and get tougher.<\/li>\n
  3. My weeds are nothing compared to these ones growing in the US <\/a>that have Homeland Security’s knickers in a twist. The ones along the Texas-Mexico border are so big that whole communities of illegal aliens can hide in them for months at a time and no one will ever know they’re there. At least I don’t have to use a chainsaw to weed my garden. Puts things in perspective.<\/li>\n
  4. I’d rather go running than work in the garden.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Nonetheless, I finally weeded our back slope this weekend. I had been feeling guilty about it for a while – we don’t see it at all, because it slopes down away\u00a0 from our yard. But the neighbors have it in full view. And it’s not pretty.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a>I removed two wheelbarrows of weeds from it and my arms got all scratched up because I stupidly wore short sleeves. The picture there doesn’t do it justice; that’s a HUGE bag and it’s jam-packed with weeds. The neighbor came out and commented as I was working. He said all the horrible-looking brown leaves must be the result of the cold snap we had this winter. I jumped on his diplomatic opening and agreed. I promised him this fall Oscar would raze the slope to a nubbins and there wouldn’t be any brown leaves next spring. Or weeds.<\/p>\n

    I have very understanding neighbors, definitely not a given in Switzerland. They could have raised a lot more of a ruckus about my yard neglect. On the other hand, I have never so much as peeped about the habit his wife has of chucking glass bottles full-force into the bin in their backyard late at night. We live in harmony.<\/p>\n

    I haven’t summoned the energy to weed the vegetable garden, and tomorrow is already the last day of May. I have planted some seeds in eggshells, but that’s more of an experiment than a true gardening commitment. They don’t seem to be hatching. If they do, I’ll take a picture.<\/p>\n

    Maybe in the coming days I’ll get inspired and clear out the weeds and buy some plantlings. I bought kale seeds while in the US last week, and they need to be planted, too. I can’t find edible kale in this country, so I had planned to grow my own. We shall see. I’ll keep you posted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It’s spring. The weeds are back in force. But somehow this year I just can’t get myself too riled up about them. It’s a combination of things: I’ve finally hired Oscar to deal with my garden overload. It came down … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[14,4,5],"tags":[189,280,188,29],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1R58n-jO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1228"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1235,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions\/1235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}