I plunged in. I put on the his gloves, put on my brown shoes, asked him to sleep in living room (to be near the kids just in case) and I walked to the backyard. The gate my neighbor made for us was nice. I had a little trouble going in, but after pushing the post a little inward the chain loosened up and I was able to open it up. I walked in and I looked at the weeds, tall (up to to the top of my thighs and I'm 5'3) and thick as a forest. I took a deep breath, told myself I could do it and I went in grabbing and and pulling weeds.
I expected a fight, but there wasn't as much as I expected. The weeds looked tougher than they were. They came out easily. Well not that easy. I did have to play tug-of-war with some of them and those weeds that proved too tough I just clipped at the lowest part of the stem with my Felco gardening scissors. The best part about the whole experience was that during the whole process I found several fruit/vegetable plants growing and growing strong. The weeds must have provide shade from the hot hot hot summer and the weeds must have also locked in enough moisture for these plants to flourish.
I was so happy to find the plants that I went inside (exhausted, back aching, and a bit dizzy but happy) and woke my husband up. Poor guy he has to work late nights all week. I told him to follow me. He said he was tired, but I wanted to show him so I asked him again. He was skeptical. He shook his head and said they were very likely weeds. I insisted he follow me. So, he finally did.
He was amazed at the progress I made. Honestly so was I. I wish I had taken a picture of the weeds before I pulled them all out. Then he looked at the plants. We disputed over 4 of them. He said they were weeds. I disagreed. Finally I did pull one up when I realized it was a weed. The other 3 we are leaving in the ground to see how they develop, then we will decide. As for the rest of them we are sure they are fruiting plants. If we can manage to keep them alive this time we may have some cantelop and watermelons after all. It's a nice thought any way.
As he stood across from me and looked at the garden he then looked up at me and he asked me why I was being so nice to him. We have a lot of history. Maybe he thinks he doesn't deserve it. I should have told him that I just wanted to bring him a little hope. I should have said I feel bad that you hate your job and your working it to put food and a roof over our head, so I wanted to do something nice for you. Instead I acted like I didn't understand what he meant. I've never been really good with the mushy stuff. I'm working on it. Sometimes it comes out. Sometimes it doesn't. Today I made a joke, " I was hoping to get more massages". He smiled. Then he said something like, "Maybe we can work something out". I'm not holding my breath though.
Of course, there is still progress to be made in the garden, more weeds to pull out and more watering, but this time it wont be all or none. I hope it wont be. We wont have many days like today to get out there, but I did tell him this, "Gardening needs to be fun right now. Let's just plants stuff and if it grow it grows and if it doesn't, it doesn't. " We'll have time to garden the way we want when we are older. Right now we have kids and work and school....
It's hard for my husband to understand time sometimes. He is the type of person that really likes to get deep into a project, so deep that sometimes he becomes obsessed with it and it become overwhelming so it becomes an all or none sort of thing. He has to find out on his own that between work and family he doesn't have the extra time he would like for his projects.
So today he finally understood what I meant when I said what I said. He smiled and he agreed. Then he said something about liking my positive thinking.
After I cleaned out all the pulled weeds and put them in a another compost pile he walked over to the main compost bin and turned the pile in there. He hadn't done that in a while. When he saw the black soil turn up from the bottom a smile grew on his face and I was happy. I smiled too.
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