weed until you find berry birds and bees

I weeded my tomato garden and thought I would show it off. After all, it was quite a task. I have pig-weed and chick-weed that grows like mad in my garden space.

My old farmer neighbor Shirl says, " if you don't have weeds growin' then it ain't no place to grow anything else." I like when he says that. I turn it all philosophical. (Of course.) I think about being blessed with what I have, and those weeds, those annoyances, they are there to remind me that I am truly living. The earth is fertile and so is my existence. I can grow my creativity, or relationships or tomatoes, but I have to remember when I manifest those things in my life, I have to accept what comes with them. It is about accepting the totality of life. Not just the round-red-fruit parts, but the weeds-that-crop-up-and-eat-up-my-energy parts as well. They both are necessary. Infertile land gives birth to nothing, not even weeds.

weed-be-gone

buh-bye

Of course, experience and careful planning does help keep some of those weeds from ever popping up.

stake and tomato

I am afraid we have run out of stakes for our tomatoes!

holy plastic staked tomatoes and blueberry (the dog)

 Here is the part of the garden yet to weed. I have my three pole bean teepees up. I love structure in a garden. I also love green. Everything here is so green now.

three pole bean teepees

green beans

lettuce tower

Perhaps it was the heat, but some of my romaine lettuce started to grow straight up all of a sudden. It still tastes delicious and we are getting spoiled with a super fresh salad every night. It looks like Jack's beanstock growing up to the sky.

Maybe this is how lettuce prays.

lettuce tower patch

This is my favorite time of the year. I can go outside and pick my food. There is no better satisfaction for me. I have partnered with the earth and it has thanked me.

For example, the raspberries are in season! Tonight I did the berry picking by myself. I harvested much more than last evening when I had Sophia "helping" me. She ate one picked one. I don't blame her, they are so good. I hope when she gets older, she remembers berry picking and eating them straight off the bush. I remember picking wild blueberries in New England when I was a girl. Perhaps that is why I have a sense of melancholy, when the berries come.

raspberries

waves of ripeness

plump and sweet

today's harvest

Look what was hiding in the berry patch...

the secret hideout

bird's nest in the berry briars

I think this belongs to the chickadees. They eat at my bird feeder. The pair must have some fledglings nearby. They talk to each other the whole time I am there picking. They stay very close and watch me. It gives me a little song in my heart knowing that they are there living in the berry patch. We share the berries, the birds and I.

Earlier today I was stung by a honey bee. It must have got inside of my boot and got trapped. It stung me on the inside of my foot on the side of the arch. I took my boot off and sure enough a bee and a bee bite. I was laughing and I looked at Rusty and said, "honey bee stings really don't hurt that bad, I can totally keep bees."

Well, I went inside and checked my email, because I had advertised my LaMancha buck for sale. A guy immediately answered the add and came over. We got to talking about goats and cows and farming. He really appreciated our farm. He loved Earl, my Nanny goats and the chickens. Then he mentioned he is a bee-keeper. He has a bunch of bee boxes and he goes to people's houses and captures swarms or hives that are unwanted and brings them home, or to his circle of bee-keeping friends. So, I get all excited and tell him about my bees in the old Victorian house we own and how I have always wanted to keep bees. So he gets all excited when he sees the house and the propolis soaking through the clapboard. We start talking bees. Now he is going to set me up with a hive box and Rusty and I are going to go help him do a huge honey harvest. His nickname is Red. So if I talk about Red in the future you know. My son is a redhead. Gotta love 'em.

So the freak honey bee sting and my announcement to Rusty (and the universe) happens, then poof... a bee keeping buddy lands here.

Oh, and Rusty says getting stung by a bee might help my arthritis a little.  :-) Imagine.

A great day for the birds and the bees. A bad day for the weeds. A great day for crow.

Keep weedin'
~crow