Now mind you, I’ve never taken a gardening class – do they even exist?  Well, if it does, I’m pretty sure they tell you one most important thing to do, outside of watering, is WEEDING!!!  Otherwise you end up with a garden that looks like this:

THAT garden, my friends, belongs to mea friend of mine.  She’s horrible about keeping up with the weeding.  Especially since she invested in some soaker hoses this year.  With very little hand-watering to do she tends to spend extra time on the computer instead of out becoming one with the dirt in her garden.  But when  I she finally paused outside long enough to take a good long gander at the state of her garden, she was HORRIFIED.  I, err I mean, she  was in quite a panic, thinking her poor baby veggies were soon going to be choked out by the big, bad, bully weeds at any moment. 

So that very morning, this pasty white, spend-to-much-time-inside gal spent 2 1/2 hours in the garden.  She was pulling weeds like a woman possessed, vowing the whole time to never let the weeds get that bad again (at least not this week anyway). 

Her kids even pitched in… for all of 3 minutes.  The boys were too distracted by the plethora of worms oozing out of every quadrant of the garden soil.  (I love worms! They are SOOO good for the soil. Last year there weren’t any to be found.  What a difference a year can make)  I could go into much detail about the worms since each one was closely scrutinized, inspected, and put through an agility test by the boys before being released back into it’s delicious garden soil home.  I think, “Go fourth and multiply…and poop a lot” was uttered several times.

(As you can see, this “friend” of mine has just a hard of time keeping up with her sons’ nails.  There goes not only her “Gardener of the Year” award but also her “Nail Technician of the Year” award!)

Here is the finished result:

Ahhh! That’s more like it.  You can actually see dirt around each plant now.  And I was only walking around like I was born without knees for 5 days afterwards!  I mean, SHE was.  Poor thing, totally  out of shape.

Rollie Pollies anyone??

Definition of gardening in the “A Boys’ Life Dictionary”*: “seeking out, identifying and studying the habits of each and every bug, creepy crawly and living nastiness found in any dirt area that your mother has planted precious vegetable and flower plants.  Best accomplished while your mother is on her hands and knees, grunting and recklessly attacking any and all weeds in the same vicinity.”

*Just to clarify, this is a totally fictional dictionary.  Although I think all us mothers of boys could easily combine our thoughts and publish just such a dictionary.*