Garden Catch Up

When I was a child my grandmother grew Moon-flower vines along the wall of her garage.  One year she gave me some seeds which I planted in a pot in my bedroom.  It grew vigorously.  It grew so fast that sometimes I would dream that I would wake up and find it strangling me.

There are times living in the wet Northeast that I feel the same way about my yard.  Everything is tall and lush and green here.  I love it.  The trees were my first love when I moved up here.  But sometimes I miss the open space of Texas and the ability to see for miles without vines and trees choking off the view. 

This week I feel like the greenery and the vines and the woods around our house are taking over the property, stealthily gaining ground each night, soon to surround us and overgrow the house.  Weeks of rain followed by a few days of heat have produced excessive growth.  I am behind on everything simply because there has been inadequate opportunity to get outside.

I have been able to spend some time in the former vegetable garden getting it cleared out.  It too is wildly overgrown and I regret that I did not get more of it torn up earlier in the season.  The whole thing still has to be rebuilt; the raised beds are falling apart and there are areas I want to expand.  A good bit of digging and carpentry work awaits.  But there are areas I can plant in the meantime.  After two days of labor I got about a 5 foot by 15 foot area cleared, including digging out what seemed like miles of wild raspberry roots and I have managed to get the peppers and kohlrabi out as well as 6 rather large heirloom dahlias I got from the gardens at the Morse estate.   The Dahlias are destined to go in the new sunny flower bed next to the new deck, sadly still on hold while the town figures out where we stand in reference to new zoning laws that were passed this past winter and spring.  The vegetable garden will be a perfect holding place from them, visible from our bedroom window.

By the time I have come inside the past two days I have been having trouble standing up straight and my hands have been protesting mightily.  My thumb and index finger joints are swollen and sore.  But generally the aches and pains feel good, like I have accomplished something significant.  I feel a certain pride at having beaten back the teeming hordes of invasive plants, and a sense of accomplishment at having imposed a bit of order on even a small piece of the world.

Needless to say my state of mind at the end of the day has been more vegetative than productive.  I did manage to enlarge the pattern for the ribbon organza coat, but I have not cut the fabric for the next muslin yet.  This is probably a good thing as I just decided that I should cut it about 2 inches longer.  The first muslin was the perfect length unhemmed, which of course means that I need to add a hem allowance.

Having finished one successful summer skirt, I also have visions of skirts dancing in my head.  They shall have to dance a little longer however, as the brain has been too numb to do the math and we leave bright and early tomorrow morning for Knoxville.