Today I woke up unmotivated for yoga, which is really unusual for me on a Saturday morning. Granted, I had several glasses of wine with friends last night, which I’m sure contributed to my general morning laziness. So…I skipped yoga & that was a-okay today!

Bob and I had time to enjoy a big, homemade breakfast on the back patio together after being quite lazy for the first few hours of the morning. I ran the drip irrigation in the early morning to get the soil moist, both to pamper my plants and ready the weeds for their immenent departure from their plush locations amid my more desirable perennials and shrubs. After breakfast, I appraised my garden (and its many, overwhelming needs) and set forth with tools & weeding container in hand.

For a couple of hours, I pulled weeds methodically in the most desperate areas. (I also cleaned up garbage! Ugh! We had our roof replaced last year & I’m still finding old roof junk in my garden beds.) I pruned back a hebe that wants to grow across our main front pathway. I finished up by harvesting the first batch of new potatoes. I try to keep several batches growing in cycles thru the season, but the first is always the most exciting to bring in. (Sometime I’ll put together an article on how I successfully grow potatoes & why I won’t eat any non-organically grown root vegetables, but that’s another story for the gardening forum or library….)

Today’s potatoes were luscious, thin-skinned white potatoes. The harvest was relatively small, and I’m not sure why. The plants were pretty weak. Granted, I did plant them up pretty early in the season, but I’m still a little curious what happened. My batch of red potatoes, which will come in next, is going to be enormous. I think the next ones I set out will be Yellow Finns, which are just great!

While I was working in the garden, I noticed that I have several small tomatoes forming (yay!), the chard is just begging to be harvested & sauted to go with potatoes tonight, and the lettuce is going to bolt if we don’t start eating a lot of salads soon! Oh, and on a floriferous note — my Dierama are starting to bloom! It must be summer!

My beets are kind of disappointing. Something is munching on them & they aren’t forming great roots. If anyone has tips on growing great beets, I’d love the input. Mine seem to be hit or miss.

The strawberries are still pluggin’ along. I took a huge bowlful over to our friends’ last night. The raspberries are starting to come in. I picked some with my favorite team of garden helpers (the neighborhood kids). Anyone surprised that most made it into the kids’ mouths rather than the berry bucket?

Well, time to shower up & get all this dirt off. I may just reward my gardening efforts with a nap on my lounge chair in the meditation garden.

Happy sunshine everyone!