Weeds in the garden

I have been spending a lot of time lately weeding the garden. One of the things I have been pulling a great deal of is

CRABGRASS

Crabgrass is so invasive that unless you use chemicals, you can hardly get rid of it. It's awful. We don't use chemicals at all in our garden, therefore, we have a lot of dandelions, crabgrass, and other garden "pests." But, we don't mind. It's nature at its finest and we would rather have the earthworms in our yard to make lots of compost for us.

When we moved to our present house in 1975, the earth was hard-packed clay. There were no earthworms and there was no garden spot. We have spent the last 31 years cultivating our little patch of heaven so we could have earthworms galore and good dirt to grow things in.

We are currently planting a lot of perennials and also a new Cypress tree out back. We pride ourselves on our green thumbs. But, those thumbs don't get green all by themselves. It takes work. Which brings me back to pulling crabgrass.

When we went to the nursery to purchase the Cypress, we also bought a bunch of perennials in pots. We were going to plant them around the new tree, but husband decided to expand our perennial plot instead. So, we spent a good bit of time out there yesterday. Husband rototilled, amended the soil and planted, while I pulled crabgrass from our existing row of perennials. By the time I was finished, I was physically finished. I ended up in the pool to cool off.

I walked around the yard this morning to examine the work that we had done yesterday. I pulled a few more weeds, did some pruning, and noticed that there are so many other areas to be weeded. Will it never end?

I have been thinking also about weeding out the extraneous things in my life. If I died tomorrow, someone would have to deal with my accumulation. I disliked doing this when my mother died, I disliked doing this when my dad died, and I certainly will dislike doing this in the future if I have to. Husband and I have been systematically going through our things for the past several years. We have been eliminating some things, but as I look around the house I am overwhelmed with all the stuff we have. Who on earth would want all this stuff after we're gone? Our kids have their own stuff so I guess someone is going to have to have a giant yard sale or auction to get rid of all this stuff one way or another.

I treasure a lot of the things I have accumulated over the years. I have several bookcases of beautiful hard-bound books and lots of soft-covered books to boot. I have antique glassware and woodenware to display. I have hooked rugs my mother made. I have a cedar chest filled with things from my grandmother. I already gave away my vast stamp collection to my son. I've been trying to organize my pictures (futile attempt). I have catalogued all my DVDs and VHS tapes. I have restored some of my jewelry and will give it away at the proper time. I have lots of framed needlepoint pictures that I made. I could go on and on.

But, there is so much other stuff that we live with daily. Do we really need all these things? I suppose, just like the invasive crabgrass in my yard, my house has been invaded by all the stuff we thought we needed over the years. Some of it we only occasionally use and other things we use all the time. I remember when we first got married, we didn't have a proverbially pot to pee in. We had no furniture, no stove, and no refrigerator. All we had was ourselves, one car, a new job, and a baby on the way.

Life was simple in those days, unhampered by all the stuff we have today. We used a push mower, rake, and shovel. Now we have two John Deere lawn tractors and a push mower, two weed eaters, rototiller, power washer, air compressor, snow blower, lots of different shovels, rakes, hoes, hammers, power tools, etc., etc., etc. Our next big purchase is going to be a big, fancy outbuilding to get all this stuff out of our one-car garage and store it outside. We haven't been able to park a car in the garage since 1976.

Get the point? We need more stuff just to store our stuff. Life is getting way too complicated. Maybe we should just find a cave someplace and hunker down. But then I would need a shower with hot and cold running water, a dishwasher, refrigerator, stove, queen-size bed . . .. Hmmm, sounds like someone needs to go shopping.