The Wages of Sin

Okay, so maybe "sin" is a bit of a dramatic word choice, as it wasn't sin so much as a certain baby of my acquaintance that prevented me from keeping up with my garden chores this year. And since it wasn't sin, that means the wages won't be death! WHEE!

Reeling myself in from the religious tangent now.

So! I finally got out into the garden yesterday to do some clean-up. It wasn't pretty out there.

There were many, many pounds of dead tomato, pepper, squash, and broccoli plants to be pulled out and disposed of. In my garden, "disposed of" means "flung over the fence into the gully." Which is easier than, say, bagging that mess up for trash pick-up or something, but still requires that I get all the dead and rotting things to and then over the fence. While not breaking an ankle in the holes left from digging the potatoes that were near the fence. And not slipping and falling in the half-rotted sheep-shit straw that I used to mulch the zucchini plants near the fence. It was a delicate dance, indeed.

The Chioggia pumpkin vine was all entwined with the evil blackberry canes and the weeds and wild grape that were also growing in the blackberry thicket. What an unholy mess THAT was. Yikes.

I spent a long time picking up half-frozen and rotting tomatoes. While wearing gloves, thankyouverymuch, because EW.

I spent even longer pulling out whatever the obnoxious weed is that totally took over the garden this year. It's shallow-rooted, so it's not really hard to pull up, but every time I pulled a handful out, about a thousand tiny white seeds would drift down onto the soil, ensuring that there will be another battle with this evil interloper next year. This made me say very bad words.

On a positive note, however, I discovered a hidden butternut squash that I pulled out and cooked for dinner last night. I also pulled out a cabbage plant from which I had harvested the main cabbage head awhile ago and then left the plant in to grow baby cabbage heads. Did you know you could do this? I discovered this fun fact last year when I left a plant in after harvesting the cabbage, just to see what would happen. What happens is a second, small harvest, which I sauteed for dinner last night. Nice.

Also for dinner last night (it was a big dinner), I dug up and cooked leeks and the potatoes from the late planting the MiL did. And then there was Chickie, of course. But I didn't dig him up from the garden. Because that would be gross. And disturbing.

And then it was time to go inside and await the awakening of the little princeling, so I didn't get everything done that I wanted to do, but it was a good start.