You know what I’m doing this time of year

 I never thought I’d be proud to have a big healthy weed in my garden, but this one makes me happy.  It’s a milkweed plant I chose to put in my garden last year to draw the monarch butterflies.  It’s the only plant they eat and lay their eggs on.  It spreads rapidly, so that means I’ll have more weeds to take down.  That’s OK, because I’m out there with a hoe killing weeds every day anyway.  

Next, I have Blueberry plants.  I put them all out last summer, but below is the oldest one, which has the start of some berries.

 This pepper plant has been in the gardon for three weeks.  It has tried its best to grow, but we have had a lot of high winds that have tried to kill it several times.  It’s ragged, but it’s tough.

There are 4 berry plants near the fence.  That’s because they need a trellis for support, and I’m hoping I can use the fence for that.  The first three are boysenberries; they are a hybrid plant, having blackberry, raspberry, loganberry, and dewberry in their parentage.  You can see the cat is messing around with the third one.  These three plants came to me looking like sticks with roots.  I assumed they’d put leaves on those “sticks” like a tree would, and had almost given up on them ever coming to life.  In the last week, they let me know they were just fine, but the sticks still look like sticks; the new life came out of the ground from the roots at the base of the “sticks”.  I have no idea if the stick parts will come to life.  Beyond the cat is a red raspberry plant.  

I often do use little sticks to make my rows, but the cat makes it difficult to keep them upright.

Oh yes, look at my asparagus plants!  In two years they’ll be big enough to eat.  Only one root failed to make a plant.

On another note, week before last I took my guitar to the two churches and sang one of the songs I wrote, Patchwork Quilt.  It tells how Christians are all different, but can still work together for good.  Last Sunday my friend Paula found one of those envelopes meant for people to put their donations in; it had been torn open and written on.  The pew is one where several children always sit, and obviously it was a child’s writing.  Paula handed it to me and said, “Look at this.  Children actually do listen in church.”

I had to laugh about the way the child tried to spell quilt.