WEEDS

WEEDS

This year's garden promises to be the biggest and most robust we have had in several years. There are tomatoes, squash, zucchini, egg plant, cucumbers, corn, string beans, peppers, and potatoes. Everything is producing well and I'm looking forward to fresh veggies in my kitchen soon.

Weeds are inevitably part of gardening, but I've encountered a new nemesis of the weed variety. Spiny Pigweed. Pure Evil in plant form, it is! Huge fibrous stems with camouflaged, 3/4 inch, hyperdermic needles at every junction. It stings like a bee when you get pricked. You can't pull it out with regular garden gloves. It requires leather rose gardening gloves, with gauntlets up to your elbows. It spreads like wildfire... like all weeds right? But, this stuff is unnaturally aggressive. I swear it reaches out and grabs your ankle when you walk by. Regular herbicides won't touch it. And Round Up isn't my preferred method of killing weeds in my prized vegetable garden. So, it's just me and my dragon hide gloves against the Green Devils.

I plan on winning this war. Which, I'm sure, will make my harvest taste even better. One always enjoys the things for which you work hard, over the things that are just handed to you.  But next year... I may think about buying my veggies from the local CSA.  Just sayin'.