Lock-down Day 323

I was just scrolling through Facebook and came across Zapiro's summary of the State of the Nation address last night:

Pretty much says it all.

I'm thinking of starting a gardening journal. Again, I know! The way I was doing it, didn't really work, I'm afraid. And I didn't keep it up. But with my new home and garden, I think it would be nice to keep track of what I planted when. Or which seeds I sowed when. I still like the idea of a hand-written journal. I could then either write a separate blog, where I can label the plants (for easy search), what I did when, what worked, what didn't, etc. Although, if I post my gardening details on a separate blog ... this blog will be pretty empty? Ha Ha!

Back at home, I started mowing! Not too hard a job, though - as the grass had grown quite a bit - it took twice as many trips to the compost heap to empty the bag. And then I tried tackling that last jungle corner ... yikes, it's gotten too long again! This is going to be back breaking ... half is just going to lay flat, rather than be cut and the other half is just too tough ... I'll be done in for the whole weekend! So ... Plan B!

Yeah, I went and got my stool, my bin and my garden scissors! Don't laugh! It worked! Better than the mower! And best of all: I don't feel like I just want to drop dead!

That's that last bit of tall grass - before I started tackling it. Yet, after I mowed around it.

So you see, it's not really such a large area. If you look closely, you can see the round beds everywhere - there are patches of brown. Small patches, one at the end of the row and another next to it. No patch of brown to identify the ponytail bed, though.

And all that tall grass you see at the back, those are also beds! I still need to weed them. Roses are in those beds - one rose per bed.

And that's about half the job done. Yeah, it looks dead and dry, I know
The entire area which had first been tackled with that lawn mower
(not me) looks like that. The area I worked first, looks more alive.

Here you can see the two rose bush beds more clearly, right at the top. I finished clearing all the way to the right rose bed. The entire row. Tomorrow, I just need to clear behind the ponytail. And from then on, I only have to mow that lawn! Well ... there are some tough reeds in there, I won't be able to mow those - I'm going to have to pull them out as soon as I can. First, though, I want to weed ALL the rose beds, the last ponytail bed and along the wall!

But before I start weeding, I want EVERYTHING mowable! I'm talking about the partitions - I've just about had it with this unkempt jungle - I want everything that falls under the heading of 'lawn' to be mowable!

Okay, so just what was I thinking when I let the 'lawn' get so completely out of hand, that - three months down the line - I'm still struggling to get it back under control?

This is a close-up of what large portions of the 'lawn' look like!
No grass, just weeds! 

This, too, looks like lawn, but it is a hard patch of stalks,
a weed - which gives any mower a hard time.
By the way, this is AFTER I mowed that patch! It doesn't get any better, I'm afraid.

See that light green stuff, that looks like a lovely type of grass? Yeah ... it's not!

See how far these paper thorns have spread?

Having seen these ... let me say that, if I had some magic juice that would instantly dissolve ALL weeds - grass-like weeds included, I'd have almost no lawn left! Just a large, brown patch! And THAT is what I was thinking: I thought that clearing the weeds first would save me a lot of mowing! Which is true ... only ... it's just too much! It still needs to be done - but not first. This garden is simply too large ... way, way more work than I thought possible!

Not a problem, though - I love doing it! I just wish I hadn't tried to be clever. If I had just kept mowing, I could have made much more progress by now! Very, very hard lesson learned!

Well, it's late and I'm actually not very tired  ... which is unusual after so much gardening. Still,  I'm going to try sleep soon... Mewthos is in my chair, so I'm on my phone now.