Little Garden of Horrors

I'm not entirely sure when it happened, but at some point in the last month I completely lost all control of the garden.  The hot weather and humidity, while not good for the crops, apparently has no effect on the weeds. The spring always starts with the best of intentions to keep it well organized and weeded, but I have now come to realize that the weeds have become so thick that I will have to mow them down just to be able to get to the garden gate, much less through it.  Yesterday, while pulling weeds fiercely determined to find the ground under all the nightshade and crab grass, I unearthed a shovel that the weeds had absconded with - and not a "hand shovel" a full sized shovel!  It has become a bit of a jungle out there, and not in a good way.

 I start to envision being tripped up by the sweet potato vines and quietly covered over and devoured like some garden horror flick.  The tomatoes have out-grown their cages and are now about six feet tall and sprawling all over the ground.  My son and I tackled them yesterday and tied up the trailing vines as best as we could - they tend to get a little unruly at this stage.  I had him help me because, quite frankly, I was almost afraid of taking on that job by myself - I need someone to run for help after they overwhelm me.  Two hours and 18 tomato plants later, we emerged covered in tomato "dust" - the greenish/yellow iridescent pollen that made us both look like green wood nymphs and with hands so green they appeared black.  One project down....two million more to take on. 

Not only are the weeds and plants completely out of control, but the list of "to do" things becomes increasingly longer with more and more things to harvest and store. 

• The potatoes are still to be dug, dried, and then stored. 
• The peppers need to be harvested and then chopped and frozen, or grilled and then frozen. 
• The beans are to be picked, shelled, dried and stored. 
• The herbs - cut, dry, store. 
•  Tomatoes - harvested, processed either by making into marinara, salsa, pizza sauce, or frozen. 
• Strawberry patch - that just needs a good weeding and mulching so it is ready for next spring. 
•  Lettuce - almost time to plant a few more rounds now that it is cooling off a little again. 
• Sunflowers - seeds to be harvested, dried, brined and roasted. 

Just typing that list makes me tired and desperate for a nap.  I always think of Spring as such a busy time, but in all honesty fall is ten times worse in so many ways - why do I always forget that?  Maybe fall harvest is like child birth....there is something inherently built in our psyche that makes us forget how awful it was so that we will somehow be tricked into doing it again, and only as the pains of labor start does the memory come back.

I bought myself a present this year in preparation for the harvesting, freezing, processing, canning, storing nightmare that I am in building up to- a food processor.  If there is anything that takes a ton of time, it is all the chopping.  Most of the time I have done it manually, but when my typically marinara recipe starts by saying, "chop three large onions" and I would stand over a cutting board crying my eyes out for 40 minutes, well suffice it to say, it was never the highlight of the day.  The one that I purchased isn't very big, but it does the job and my kids fight over being the ones to push down the handle and chop the food.  I wonder how long that will last?

I am sure that at some point - probably into my thirtieth quart of marinara, I will stop caring about the weeds and the horrors that live in my garden and I will completely let it go to pot, venturing down there only to nab whatever produce I can before it is engulfed by the other viney vegetation.  Then I will stand on the porch and simply long for the first hard frost to kill it off and when that happens, then.....then I will take a nap.