Honey, can you vacuum the lawn?

Despite going from 0 to 35 celcius in two weeks, the garden seems to be thriving, as well as the weeds. I had great intentions to eliminate the creeping bellflowers, but between being a single mom, taking an intensive master's level summer course, finishing off the semester with preparation and department meetings to plan for next fall (when YAY! I will be teaching again), dealing with a divorce and the fallout thereof, I am barely keeping up. I am doing a few hours a week but the weeds are way ahead of me. My focus was the bellflowers, especially as I planned to plant tomatoes in several areas of the garden where they were cropping up in abundance.

 I was given a reprieve when a bunch of my seedlings got burnt and died after their first outing in early May (I did not anticipate that), so I had a lot fewer tomatoes than I planned. I figured it was okay, less weeding, less work, and a few fallow areas of the garden were worth fewer tomatoes, especially as I started growing them earlier so hopefully will have an earlier and more productive harvest.

I had a few late sprouts come up which I thought were hot peppers. After some of the plants died, I transplanted some of the seedlings into the empty sections of the flats to give them more space, and of course, did not bother labelling them because by then they were identifiable. So when a few new sprouts popped up, the labels were already off. I planted them only to discover they were late sprouting tomatoes of indeterminate variety. I will have to clear another garden area to transplant them so I can cage them. More weeding!


As I was desperate to rid myself of bellflowers, I did not prioritize the dandelions. We had a bumper crop last year and after I sprained my wrist I begged my family members to do the noble thing and take over the weeding, but not much happened. It is a constant job because every time you miss one, you get several hundred more coming up. I found myself looking at a yardful of bright yellow flowers knowing full well that they would turn to seed in the blink of an eye. I mowed them hoping to delay the inevitable, but they are quite resistant to my hand mower. I ran around picking heads off and bagging them carefully because they instantly go to seed when you pick them.
Then they went to seed. Hundreds upon hundreds just ready to fly up and take over the world. I begged my son to help when I was at work. I asked him to take the vacuum cleaner outside and vacuum the seeds off. I was desperate and it seemed like it might work. I came home and looked out the back window, and although there were some sad empty stems, I still saw a field of white balls. I asked my son and he swore he had vacuumed those parts of the lawn, and more came out in the few hours since. So I went outside and started carefully handpicking the seeds and bagging them. My neighbour's daughter wanted to play and saw all the wonderful dandelions and made a beeline for me with glee in her eyes. She wanted to play fairies. I told her that I was collecting magic fairy dust and hiding it in a bag for later use. She loved the sound of this game and became an enthusiastic though not quite meticulous helper. She offered me an ice cream in exchange. I realized that the bag we were using to contain the dandelion seeds was an empty bag of composted manure which I was recycling for the purpose. Telling my neighbour that she had to wash the her hands because the fairy dust bag was used for poop (good Lord!), I am hoping that I am not completely warping her sense of magic and fairy tales. In the end she was quite helpful and my lawn looked green enough after I used the weed wacker to hack off the stems that from a distance it looked like it may have been grass. Then yesterday I started going for the roots of the plants. I do love dandelions, but there is too much of a good thing. And I have neighbours who feel otherwise.

Speaking of fairies, the columbines are up and showing some marvelous variety this year. Plenty of hybridizing going on. They look like fairy hats of the most fanciful types. The poppies also exploded, two shades of orange and two of pink, and they all bloomed at once. I cannot get my camera to capture their subtlety, but the colours are electric.

The tulips, bleeding hearts and the trilliums are just about done, the irises are in full bloom and the peonies are about to bloom. It seems like everything is coming out all at once and the garden looks spectacular.  The potatoes are up and the garlic is huge. I still haven't planted corn, my sister-in-law gave me an African variety on her visit last fall, and I need to decide quickly what to do with it. More weeding, I guess, first.