Overwhelmed (A Garden in August)

 Clipping dead leaves off the tomatoes.

My garden. At this point in the summer, everything about it is too much for me. The weeds grow faster than I can pull them, and even the veggies seem like homework. I have to check on them every day.

In the spring, before Julia's open house, Nate tilled the garden and the girls planted it.
We kept our heirloom seeds from last year, so we're finally starting to save some money.
Let me tell you, gardening can get expensive. Sometimes I wonder why we have a garden. I think part of it is guilt. Since we have this huge yard, we'd better grow something useful on it. Because I'd feel much happier just tending my flowerbeds.

I looked for a poem that would describe this garden, and oh my, poems are so dark these days! None of them summed up my real, messy, beautiful, growing garden.
So I had to write my own poem. Not easy with a teething baby who gets into everything, but here it is.

August Warfare

A fresh day. Ready weapons
to rejoin the battlefield.
I'll need a hoe, garden shears,
and two strong persistent hands.

The troops take some convincing
before they join my unit.
Eventually, we three
struggle out to the garden.
The baby acts as captain.
Stroller out front, all-terrain
shoves a swath towards action.

Here we are, surprised again
by the quickness of the change.
In two days of heat and rain,
the enemy has gained ground.

"Do you want to pick beans, or
do you want to weed and hoe?"
I ask my daughter. "Well beans!"
she answers, and I, kneeling,
begin to dig and yank weeds.

In minutes, the colander
is heaped with our spoils of war.
The baby munches peapods.
Looks like we're victorious.

I fling a final weed clump
Far into wild-growth borders,
throwing out a dare to all
foes of order and bounty.

(I wrote this in syllabic measure, seven syllables per line).

 Walking to the garden. The cement raised part holds early crops and tomatoes, 

the bed behind it holds squash, pumpkins and cukes.

 A pretty pea blossom.

I weed around the beets.

 Peas, stealthily hiding in a web of green.

Harvest time!

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