Oh, the shame

 I am a poor gardener this year.  With very little rain and too much heat, I lost all interest.  We usually start getting tomatoes around July fourth, but not this year.  Not a single red tomato have we had.  I had a few green beans, but I just let most of them pass me by.  Weeds began to sprout everywhere and I couldn't have cared less, so I let them grow.  The week of July fourth, our son was here with his wife, and the day after the fourth we had our usual friends and relatives around.  Everyone brought food.

Our nephew Brian (one of Cliff's late brother's sons) always brings his family, and they want to see my garden.  I told him it was a mess this year and the weeds were getting pretty high, but there we were, walking through the weeds and all, and even with the sad state of my garden, they found things to admire.  So last Monday and for the rest of the last week, I went out at six every morning and pulled weeds for at least an hour; sometimes quite a bit more.  One day I had my 10,000 steps before 8:30 A.M.  Here's how I looked when I'd come inside:

Mud on my clothes and even on my socks, because there had been a little rain, before I started the project; and every time I pulled up a big weed, damp dirt on the roots would go all over me... in my hair, and inside the boots I wear in the garden.  My fingernails were dirty and my face and body were sweaty.  My 81-year-old legs and knees were killing me, but I went out again every morning. 

It's a good thing Brian and his family came, because otherwise my garden would have been a thing of the past.   We have not had much rain.  But I might be trying for a fall garden.

I messed up my blog a while back trying to make sure my daughter could get in it and let people know if or when I've stopped blogging.  I can still blog, but I can't let people who comment on my older blog stories be seen.  And I can never change the picture at the top of my blog.  It makes me even less interested in blogging, and I have no idea how to fix it.