A little weed goes a long way

Toby eye-balling the enemy

From the series: Life on Dog Hill

Now that I’ve got my kids’ attention, listen up! As the head gardner on Dog Hill, I’m telling you that everyone has to weed. You wanna roof over your head? You wanna see food on the table? Weed (ing) is the answer.

Here are five simple truths about gardening:

1.  The word gardener is a euphemism for weed pulling, water bearing, plant moving laborer. So, if that’s my job description, just imagine how much more of that my workers have in their job descriptions.

2.  Weeds don’t grow, they invade. You never see them slowly sprout and mature over a period of time. You just wake up and they’ve taken over an entire garden plot.

3.  Weeds are clever and try to disguise themselves as flowers. You need an encyclopedic knowledge of the plant kingdom to know the difference. If it even looks suspicious, yank it!

4.  There’s no bad karma accrued for killing weeds. You’ll just have to trust me on this one.

5.  A little weed goes a long way. I weed when I let the dogs out in the morning. I weed when I walk down the drive to grab the paper or collect the mail (and then again on the way back up). I weed as I’m walking to the car, or the neighbor’s house, or to feed the chickens. In fact, I don’t step foot outside the house without pulling up a weed because a little weed goes a long way!

Oh, how I love a garden. Oh, how I hate weeding.

Now, if I could just convince the members in my house that their love for the garden is worth a little weed!