puttering about

After all the rain, the grasses in the meadows are tall and lush.

I've spent the last two days blissfully puttering about in the garden.

You know what it's like: you don't bother getting very pretty in the morning. It would be a waste of time, because you know you'll be dusty and sweaty by the end of the day with all kinds of dirt under your fingernails. You'll be scratched, you might have a thorn or two in a finger to irritate you, your back may ache, a fingernail or two might be broken, you will have a fine case of hat-head from wearing your favorite garden-headgear all day, you might have a smudge or two of dirt on you face and your knees and feet will be black with dust as well. You might even have a mosquito bite or two to top things off! But despite all that, if you have the disease (if you've been bitten by the gardening bug, that is), you will be very, very happy.

I always have good intentions of keeping track of what exactly I have planted out when, and I do start to make lists, I honestly do...but...here I am again, with really no idea when I planted what. Oh, when I'm in the garden, I know what's what. The garden is laid out on paper, the tags go in the garden as I plant, but....then the fairies of the garden lead me astray. I have no interest in keeping a record on paper of what I've have done today, even though I have a big old garden-diary just for that purpose! The garden imps even beguile me to the extent that I neglect my blog! The best I can manage at the end of the day, as I lie in my bed, is to daydream with satisfaction over the piece of paper on which I graphed out my garden during the depths of winter. Minor adjustments have been made and the paper has been refolded and put into my pocket so many times that it is becoming a bit hard to read, what with the odd dirty fingerprint and creases wearing thin.

With no rhyme or reason, the garden is sort of going in willy-nilly. As I obtained seedling plants from here or there ( I didn't bother starting seeds in the greenhouse after all because I discovered that anything I put in the greenhouse was turned up and tunneled out by a chipmunk who has squatters rights there for now), I managed to turn up this part of the garden or that, eliminating some of the weeds that had gone wild in it as I went, and the plants went in. Or I seeded rows of this or that. A wheelbarrow-full or two of composted manure from the pile in the barnyard has gone into the garden as well. The garden will probably grow willy-nilly too, with erratic gluts and excesses of harvest (that I try to preserve or give away to lucky friends and family) but it's my garden and I like it like that.

I did tell you, didn't I, how unlucky I have been with my peas. I even resowed the peas...I even tried soaking the peas first...Another piece of bad luck: a tomato plant was snapped off by the wind, I presume. I don't know if it will grow from the bottom part that was left behind seeing as it has no leaves...oh dear.... this even though I had put plastic grocery bags around the seedlings to protect them until the weather improved.

The other night, arriving home late at night as I do from my paying job, I happened to look out my window and spied a raccoon calmly wandering through the garden! How do they know the dogs are in the house and so coons are free to walk the garden without fear? The raccoons have never bothered my gardens much before, ... but I wonder why my peas are not making an appearance. No signs of digging. Oooh...I hope the raccoons are will be confused later in the season by the squash vines I planted between the corn...!!

I have noticed that unlike last year, Misty seems to respect the paths in the garden. Most of the time, anyway. Maybe she notices that people stay out of the beds, walking on the paths, so she does too. Here's hoping. When I'm working in the garden, Misty will often be near me, lying in the sun. She has such a hard life! (Tasha tends to stay in the shade or near Ann, and Molly is most often tied to her tree because of her unrelenting car-chasing.)