Airing out some dirty laundry

I was at the story time at the library tomorrow, and one of the mom said that she reads my blog, and doesn’t know how I do it all. I get that a lot. I feel really silly getting that, because you know, I only show you the good stuff. I usually only show you the stuff I’m proud of. The confessions of not-me-Monday are true, but mostly just for fun.

So today, I decided to do the unthinkable, and air out what I’m really bad at. This is a visual tour. I’ll explain as I go.

This is my front flower garden. At one point I was ambitious enough to plant some flowers around the tulips this spring. I was planning on filling in the spots where the tulips were with some annuals, but never got to it. Now grass and weeds are there. Yes, the picture at the top of my blog now is of this flower garden, but I only showed a pretty part of it in the photo, of course.

And horror of horrors, this is my jungle of a vegetable garden. Want to see it close up?

Here’s my strawberry patch in the garden. The deer ate most of the strawberry leaves and blooms, and I just let it grow over.

And here is just a patch of weeds so tall you think it would be put there on purpose. But no…just weeds.

And here are my tomato plants that are producing so much now. They got so big that all 6 of them tipped over, and many of the tomatoes are sitting in the dirt on top of each other, and therefore many have to get thrown in the field because they’re too bruised to use. I should have reinforced their stakes, and picked them up at some point, I guess.

The middle mass of plants are the green beans. They still have beans on them, and I haven’t picked them in a long time. I’m kinda afraid to go over there to see how much has gone to waste because I haven’t had time to get there. Blogging is more important to me than green beans, I guess. Then there’s a mass of weeds and a short row of beets and in the corner are the asparagus plants. Those actually are supposed to be that way–looking like mini trees. To the left are another row of weeds and the peas.

The peas are long gone, and really should be pulled and the fences be put away. But instead, a row of weeds between them has risen up, determined to surpass the actual pea plants.

So there you have it. I’m terrible at gardening. I want to be good at gardening. I spend a lot of time planning them out. I always seem to give up mid summer sometime, and just harvest what survives. This summer I was determined to see it through, but we were on what seemed like a constant month of vacation with Montana, family visiting, and lake time. I could never quite recover the garden from weeds after that, and gave up not too long after that.

So I hope you all feel better about yourselves now, and not put me on such a pedestal for getting so much done. There are things that never get done at my house too. This is so embarrassing, because farmer’s are supposed to have nice gardens, and my poor husband does not. (Well, he actually takes care of the rose garden, and that is beautiful.) When I look at my garden, I often feel like a city girl who has no clue what she is doing. It’s the thorn in my side, that I hope one day to conquer. Silje and David actually were a decent help this year in the garden at the beginning of the summer. I’m hoping next year it will be even more so. Because as you can see, I need all the help I can get!