A Challenge or Two

I spent a couple days last week at my parents' house in the Bay Area to visit.  Dad fell and broke his hip and although he's doing really well, I wanted to see him and see what I could help Mom with.  Boy, this aging stuff is not always Fun with a capital F.  One of the tasks I set myself to was to pull a few weeds in the raised beds Dad has worked for darn close to 40 years.  The soil was so beautiful that the weeds almost leapt up into my hand; it could hardly be called work at all.

When I returned on Sunday, I had just enough time to get some laundry done and a couple of other chores.  I took the day off Monday and spent the whole day in the Lower Garden pulling weeds.  Now, this was a Task.  Since I'd tried and failed to explain to Mom the difference between weeding at their house vs. weeding at our house, I decided to take a picture.  This shot shows the path from the top of that garden area, with big roses along the fence on the right and another rose bed with miniatures on the left, culminating in a quince tree - the trunk is visible.  Everything but the roses and the quince are weeds of some sort.  Icky filaree, dried grasses and false dandelion.  I spent six hours at it and filled I'm not sure how many wheelbarrows full.  And unfortunately, I didn't even finish cleaning up the whole garden, but have big plans for this coming weekend.  Woo hoo, long weekend = Weeding!

Side note:  I splurged a few weeks ago and bought a new lens for my camera:  a Lensbaby Control Freak with double glass optic and the macro converter kit.  This is the band saw in the shop building.