Best. Tool. Ever.

The bane of my garden life are the uninvited plants, of course. I have been hand plucking for what feels like decades--centuries!--and nothing seems to improve the situation. I have carefully dug each and every plant out,  "chopped" with a weeding tool recommended by Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and guerrilla weeded, pulling at random in fly by manner,  I have done everything short of poisoning or burning.

There are three things I carry with me from my youth that I know I will never do exactly right, because these are the three things I never got right under the tutelage of my parents. These are:
     Washing the car (You are leaving streaks!!)
     Ironing (Can't you do anything right?!), and
     Weeding

I hear my father's voice when I weed: "Get out all the root!!" He could be thoroughly ashamed to see me now, pulling and tearing and randomly plucking.  But he couldn't know what I would be up against. We lived in a drier clime, not this jungle where things spring up overnight.  Here, everything gets watered frequently from the sky and where there's water there's life--great green batches of it whether you want it or not. To get out every root could be my full time job, my calling, my life. Do I want that? No....

So I invested in a weeding tool from one of the myriad garden catalogs I receive (they've found me!--they've all found me!!) It feels like treachery, betrayal, even blasphemy to use it, since I'm not abiding by the family dictum to get out every last bit of root. But I love it. I weeded the beds this week in 1/3 the time. The veggie plants are happy, I'm happy--what's not to like? 

I have turned my back on family dictum in the garden. Now if only I could stop ironing wrinkles into my clothes...

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