Gardening

Ah, Spring. The reemergence of green things (except our lawn), insects ("Mom, what are those yellow things? I'm worried about yellow jackets!"), and children ("Mommy! Let's get the Bubble Blasters and ride our bikes and we can play Teacher!" Teaching ... what? Luckily they usually lose interest in this game pretty quickly.)

This weekend we went through the annual ritual of clearing out our weed garden (a patch of ground that the previous owners had planted a lush garden on, which quickly went to pot when we moved in (and I don't mean we planted marijuana -- or "weed" -- I mean WEEDS.)) Every spring since we moved in, we have cleared that out with the thought that THIS YEAR we would defeat the locust tree forest that keeps trying to reestablish itself there, and make it a lovely oasis in the otherwise wide open expanse that is our backyard (sadly, I am from Indiana, so I like wide-open areas, so I haven't been strongly motivated to change.) We have lived here for three years now, and despite best intentions, by the end of the summer that spot is more of a blemish than a beauty spot. Ah, but enough flowery language.

This year, we planted some hazelnut trees we received from the Arbor Day Foundation in the weed garden. For the most part, the kids were happy enough to play by themselves, but after awhile they decided that there were more fun things to do than shoot Mom with the Bubble guns -- I mean, "Bubble Blasters" -- such as:

• Ooh and aah over a locust shell Mom found while yanking out weeds;
• Ask Mom to refill the Bubble Guns;
• Cry bitter tears over the loss of the locust shell when the wind blew it out of Gwen's hand;
• Argue over whose fault it was the locust shell was lost;
• Ooh and aah over a grub Mom found (that is one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen, but I digress);
• Beg Mom for rides in the wheelbarrow.

They only became interested in this last activity when Mom had only two or three loads left to take, so by now our allergy-infested Gwen was getting pretty stuffy. At one point, when I was cleaning out the wheelbarrow in preparation for giving them a ride back to the Weed Garden, Gwen sneezed a terrible sneeze. There was a whine of disgust from Xav, who then said, "Mo-om! Gwen just bless-youed all over me and the wheelbarrow!"

Once the wheelbarrow rides were over, so was Xav's interest in planting trees, so he came in and I gave him a bath. Despite allergies and sunburn, Gwen stayed with it until the bitter end. Hopefully, we have actually planted trees -- they were so tiny that they often got lost in the twigs on the ground. It may be that this is the first year that we seed the Weed Garden ourselves.