These long days are the worst part of the year if you love gardening. We've entered the long and hot portion of the program but have nothing really to eat yet to remind us that it's all worth it.
Besides some peas, if you're into that kind of thing, and some late spring greens - it's just long, hot, and depressing for right now.
The tomatoes are just small vines that need constant watering and still stand dwarfed by their cages. Nothing is quite as optimistic as securing a massive tomato cage into the soil surrounding a tiny tomato plant. Like the kid who shows up to the fifth-grade dance wearing his Dad's oversized suit with the cuffs and sleeves rolled up, they look ridiculous but still hold the promise to someday fill it out. For now, they'll just sway back and forth and hopefully not trip over themselves.
I have the policy to pinch off all tomato flowers until July 4th. This allows the plants to put enough energy into their roots and growing that they bear more later in the season rather than fruiting too early without an adequate plant platform. It also means I don't even have the tiny tomatoes to stare at hungrily for at least another month.
The combination of watering, pruning, and not eating homegrown veggies also means that the weeds are already going bananas. They're happy to be here just to ruin everyone's day. The more weeds I see, the more I feel it in my lower back, even before I pick the first one. It's an anticipatory pain.
Although I have finally mostly figured out the electric fence for the goats this spring and have a constant stream of friends forwarding me feel-good articles about municipalities using goats for weed and fire mitigation, I still have to weed many parts of our property manually.
Goats are effective at weeding, but they're also effective at ruining anything else around.
We have a front "island" type landscaped area at the front of our home that is completely overgrown in dandelions. Interspersed are the fruit trees off which our goats can strip their bark flat in seconds. I've thought about wrapping the trunks of the trees in chicken wire to prevent their murder while encouraging the weed eating, but by the time I figure out the logistics, I could have just actually pulled the weeds out myself.
It's worse for the garden. Trying to use the goats to rid my garden of weeds would be like a brain surgeon showing up to the OR with a hatchet in lieu of a scalpel.
So, I don gloves, gird my back, and pull the weeds where I must.
My trusty garden wagon is often brimming with veggies, but right now it's overflowing with trash plants.
For every weed I pull from the ground (and I try to get as many roots as possible), two more show up in its place. It's like a never-ending battle of whack-a-mole. I'll never win the war, all I can ever do is slightly decrease the trajectory of the loss. Losing at a slower rate is a win onto itself.
So, I bend down, grip, and pull. Until you've done it a few thousand times, there's no obvious way to pull a weed. Pinching at the base, there's a finesse needed to get the root to release below the surface without just ripping off all the leaves. There's something so satisfying when the roots start to give, though.
No matter what, though, they'll make their way back. A certain peace comes from recognizing that the weeds will always return. The obstacle will never be fully removed - it just comes back again and again.
There's a special exhaustion and frustration knowing that I will fight the weeds for as long as I'm alive and continue to garden (hopefully for as long as possible.) But there's also a strange comfort that comes from knowing that I will fight the weeds for as long as I'm alive and continue to garden.
Grip the base, feel the root give way, and get that sucker. And the next one. And the one after that.
Keep going!!!