G. G.

Guilty Gardener. Yes, I was leaving the garden yesterday, feeling good that I'd strung the string and bad that my garden isn't as lovely as the others. I was pushing the grandbaby up 10^th street in the stroller, when I ran into my neighbor and her friend from Victoria. We stopped and chatted, again she commented on my pigweed and lambsquarters and I think convinced me not to worry about the letter and the man, the one who comes with a clip board to record the behavior of community gardeners, giving us grades, A, A, A+, D- --the last one's me, because of the weeds, but my friend was saying again, about the studies the Japanese Doctor who wrote the book One-Straw Revolution, philosophy on gardening with weeds. That in the garden, the exact weeds the soil needs will grow. If the soil is too acid, it will draw weeds that like acid soil, which will use up the bite, if it's too alkaline…etc. And he only weeded small patches around the plants.

Now I think this has other benefits—the deer can't see the plants they want to eat because the weeds are in the way, and so they eat weeds instead. Last year I planted the beans inside the row of Cosmos. I'm doing the same this year. It worked last year, so unless the deer have turned sneaky, then.... Deer don't eat Cosmos. But weirdly, they do eat tomato plants, which I've never seen them do before. My Zebra Stripped Tomato is missing a limb. Aurgh!

Well, well, what else to tell you. I've realized that women, well this one anyway, has much to give to the world and the man who's being such a @$%! to her, is nuts. That's a good realization in the scheme of things. Heartbreak is so hard to get over. I left my boyfriend in high school after he moved to Alaska. I was a bit Lazafaire about it, and my sister, four years younger, was pissed, what did she know? She was mad at me for being mean to Bill. But how could we date, with him in Alaska and me in Washington, and was I to wait until after I graduated to have a boyfriend? No, as it went, I met my high school sweetheart that later became my daughter's father, and my drunken husband. Fate? Who knows these things. But there is a book I'm going to read called SaddleUp Your Own White Horse that I think will be interesting in teaching me how to come back to myself always, to trust my decisions, to not defer to others, etc. So I will quit sulking around the garden being the G.G. thinking someone will come over to me and laugh and say, "So many weeds!"

Ciao!