Admitting Defeat

We had beautiful weather 2 out of the 3 days on the Canada Day long weekend.  Those two nice days I spent in the garden … weeding.  I probably should have been thinning things as the weeds don’t really do any harm.  But I must admit, I wanted the weeds gone so gone they would be!  Steve offered to help on several occasions and was turned away each time – I wanted to weed my way, not his way.

After a day and a half in the garden with no end it site, I admitted defeat and asked for help.  It was a difficult thing for me to do because I knew what the outcome would be.  The area I weeded would be completely weed free, and the area I had help with would have significantly less weeds, but not be weed free.  I had to ask though, or I’d probably still be there, weeding in the muck.

As we started to work on the weeds together, things went well at first: Steve loosened the dirt with the hoe while I picked out the weeds.  We had just barely gotten started and he had to stop: he was still recovering from a sore back and using the hoe made aggravated it.  He decided to switch to the pitch fork.  This did not go so well as the work for me was more difficult than when I was doing it myself.  I had to bite my tongue not to say something as I had asked for the help.

Anyway, a few weeks ago a friend gave us his old rototiller.  Remembering the old beast hiding under the deck, Steve disappeared with it in the garage and returned half an hour later covered in grease with blue exhaust streaming behind him.  It was a beast of a machine and gassed us out while he tilled but it got the job done.  Unfortunately it still left me with all the weeds to pull out of the dirt. 

Words cannot describe how much fun it was crawling around it the fresh tilled dirt picking weeds while swatting the mosquitoes that were (key word “were”) hiding in the dirt.



99% Weed Free - July 2



When everything was done it made me feel proud to have a relatively weed free garden – even if I did break down and ask for help.  It made me realize that maybe I don’t need to do everything myself.  Maybe help is a good thing; especially if the help does things my way. ;)