Never give up! Never surrender!

Despite how little I have managed to get done in the last week and change, I am still determined to press forward however I can. Seems obvious, right?   If you stop, things will really get out of hand, and more work for later, which no one wants.

Fortunately for me, the only things I’m worried about killing are all the starter kitchen plants that haven’t made it into the ground yet.

The good news is that a lot is growing just fine on its own, and no thanks to my efforts except in a few cases where I rescued a few things from various less than ideal situations.

In between rains, I’ve been hewing down and uprooting my current foes in the Dandelion War.  It’s a very strange war to me, because I really like dandelions.  I want to keep some around for all the bugs that have been happily visiting them.  Yet as I was discussing online the other night with a friend that isn’t even in New England, they too are seeing an abundance of dandelions that they can’t even explain either.

It could be the sudden heat maybe?  That combined with the rain?  I’m no expert, but I do know that we did not have this many last year and I know how careful we were about the seed heads.

Lots of salad greens?  Oh, aye!  But if my health was better, I’m at the point where I would be battling in the rain as well as when the skies have gone dry.

If you’ve ever found yourself at this point where you are appalled at how far behind you are (or even just feel), I encourage you to take some time to think about how far you’ve come since you started.  Even if that only means you’ve managed to mow whatever lawn portion you have overall in your yard.  When you have a big project–even if the plot size involved isn’t very large–every bit matters.  In the best of all possible worlds, the yard isn’t going anywhere and neither are you.  So press on as best you can, but don’t give up or surrender completely!  Just acknowledge that Mother Nature is playing her hand, and you just need to accept the utter lack of control you have over that and press forward as she allows.  Let her take the blame.  Less stress for gardeners everywhere!  Hurrah!

In all seriousness, though…use the delayed time out there to consider what you’ve planned and decide what you might want to drop or simply work around for the year if need be.  Also take some time to just goof off too.  Sometimes I think that’s the best takeaway of all–especially if you’re juggling the yard work with the other usual day to day stuff that simply must happen.

Right now, even my front yard is works in progress looking as well as being.  Fortunately, I’m not in an HOA.  Also good for me is that even if something is driving my neighbors batty, they’re too polite to say so.  I did make sure we got the push mower out this week and at least got what little lawn we have out front looking respectable again.

We have the most wonderful fleabane patch returning this year.  It’s glorious.

Whatever it is that moved into what used to apparently only be hosta beds, has downright taken over.  I still need to ID it which always seems trickier when all you see is leaves.  I’m a bit worried, but in truth we had planned to shift all the hostas in the thin beds along the stairwell to the back anyhoo.  The only problem now is because of all the rain and the 80° days encouraging everything to grow crazy fast, it’s a bit trickier to get the hosta bits out.