weed, weeded, weeding

I spent a good bit of the day weeding (i'm generally opposed to the word weeding {for myself} because it holds so many assumptions, but for the life of me I can't find another word for the job. tidying up? two words. yard work? possibly, but still two words. i'm working on it. i have resorted to using the word weeding over the last two weeks for lack of a better word and because I think it is fairly descriptive of what I have been doing, whether I like it or not...) again and am glad to see that my back and neck aren't having quite the same problem they did a few weeks ago when I first began tidying up the back garden area in earnest. I keep doing it because I really want that area cleaned up and logistically easier to care for, but I won't say I wasn't concerned my body wasn't going to be as into it as my mind seemed to be. My mind jumped at the chance. And the two of us- my mind and I- have been working on the garden area one thing at a time (i keep reminding my mind when it gets ahead of me and i feel overwhelmed with the task. one.thing.at.a.time. don't look beyond that lest i feel too overloaded to tackle any of it.)

(and why divide us all up like that- body, mind, me?- just for the fun of it. and frankly- to account for some of the disparity i experience when i try too hard to sum things up into one experience.) (and to sort of indulge that disparity a bit. i read somewhere a few years ago that one way we as a culture are dysfunctional is that we are taught we shouldn't feel more than one way at a time and as a result, we have a difficult time reconciling different and conflicting feelings....)

I'm happy with how it's going. I spent quite a bit of time with the strawberries and am pleased with how many we now have. I transplanted a few and cleaned up around most of them. I'm now trying to decide how to keep it um weeded more easily. The nursery people suggested cardboard around the plants and then dirt on top of that. It seems like that would work well with rows but my berry plants are all hodgepodge like, with very little rhyme or reason. I don't really want to go the way of hemlock mulch around them because I don't believe it really is sliver-free (and eva walks out in the garden a lot. it has to be eva-friendly.) I'm not sure which way I will end up going. One project at a time. Right now I'm working on the area in between the raised beds, covering it with newspaper (i actually bought one!) and then medium cedar chips, with rectangular pathway slabs on top of that. Eva is thrilled and mentioned how fun it will be to walk around under the sunflowers later in the summer.



I love how the purple kale has yellow flowers. It's such a nice contrast. Never fear- this kale is from last fall. There is more spring kale in the other bed. Always plenty of kale.