Rural Gardening: Adventures on Dirt Rich Farm (City goes Country), 1 by Hineni

Hineni wrote:
As you can see in the attached photo here, this was no ordinary weeding task. These weeds were over five feet tall. I'm barely 5'4", and most of them were above my head. I am no spring chicken. I'm on the fluffy side (ewes not fat, ewes fluffy!), and I've been working a desk job for too many years. I've not chased toddlers nor pups in a long time. I'm getting over this...LOL!

So here is what I started up against today....nearly 1/4 acre of WEEDS. I had my trusty assistants Bonnie & Clyde, and city-boy Anakin to keep me company, along with curious stares from the horse as she visited the lower pasture for grass, and stopped for a bite near the goat barn.

But before I could even GET to the task of weeding, I had other chores and events that kept me busy until a little after nine, even though I was up a nearly daylight (pups gotta eat, right?) Right off the bat, after getting my first cup of java and settling in to check out the forums, I hear yelping and hollering from the pups. Can't find them, they aren't at the house. Probably because they had just been chastised for eating limbs off of my blueberry bushes and snagging the tags from them and getting them mixed up. I followed the yelps to the side path outside the garden gate. Apparently the draft horse had not seen them playing in the undergrowth and stepped on them both. So they came limping and yelping over to the gate, all sad looking. After full body checks, feet, head, hips and tummies, I couldn't find any major damage, and no blood or bones to deal with. Just two scared pups who probably will stay off the path now for oh, about 24 hours until they forget what happened. They are great dogs, they just aren't terribly smart or coordinated currently. They learn really well things TO do, but they ain't got a handle on things I don't want them to do yet, or things they shouldn't do in the first place (like tussle on the horse path!) So after loving and checking on them and some treats and Rescue Remedy to calm their anxiety, I set off on my next task.

This was bringing up water from the spring for watering the plants in case the rain thing didn't pan out. I had the brilliant ( or so it seemed at the time....) idea of loading up the wheel barrow with empty water jugs and 5 gallon buckets. Should go well, yes? Um, yeah, getting DOWN to the spring went fabulous. Everyone was jaunty and it was cool outside and the horse incident was already forgotten. She had headed back up to the meadow and wasn't endangering anyone's feet or paws with her 1800 lb. self at the moment. Checked the stock tank, no water snakes in there today, we're cool, we're good to go. The puppies kept the stock tank algae at bay by the mouthfuls while I cheerfully filled up......nearly 30 gallons of water jugs. Now, I'm the smart one in the family tree, so the story goes. And I can pull my weight at chores. But let me tell you....water is heavy. Water in a wheel barrow going UP a hill that also contains small rocks, happy dogs who have no sense of danger of lots of water jugs falling out on their heads, fresh horse poop and me...well, it was not a pleasant combination. I do believe that the path from the garden gate to the spring grew, you know, like Rod Serling's Night Gallery pictures of that growing hallway. Honestly. After nearly running over the dogs several times, side-stepping the fresh fertilzer, and nearly tearing my jeans right off when I veered into a large blackberry patch, I DID make it back to the garden. This procedure needs a severe revision for the future. But we did it.

So there was no more putting off 'weeding' the garden. Here is what it looked like when I began....