It's Hard not being the Cutest Kid on the Block

A slight tinge of guilt overcomes me for all of five seconds, and then I'm good to go.  Patio, deck, pathways...ash tree leaves and seeds sucked through whirling blades, stuffing vacuum bag until it weighs 57 pounds...I've weighed it...just kidding...it actually feels more like 84 pounds.  Dumped over, and over, and over, and over again; pulverized leaves crammed into every micro inch of space in compost bins...this IS a HuuuUUUUUGE ash tree.  Aged compost of older bins emptied into gardens, if needed...hardwood mulch replenished in areas where previous mulch has become one with the earth.  Okaaay!!!  I'm done for the winter.

Nature puts my gardens to rest when the days change to cold, colder, and coldest.  I merely spiffy up man made areas of lovely bleak, gray, boring concrete...although, much to my chagrin, lichens and cracks are taking over the concrete surface more and more as each summer passes; and heaven help me, I am starting to like the look.  Insects bed down in all this garden crap - leaves and stems, grass and weeds.  Stay at home birds and migrating flocks toss all this garden crap about, picking out tasty morsels on which to snack.  Unnatural fertilizers and pesticides haven't touched these hallowed grounds for decades.  Spring is my preferred time to spruce up the grounds a bit, chopping up or down stems that go right back into gardens, following nature's example. 

Fall blazes into a magnificent bonfire, and it literally cremates any quality time I had in reserve into a fluff of black cinders, as this is my chosen time for garden plantings that inevitably avalanche out of control.  Bloody awful, loved as much as puke, burmuda and johnston grass has to be meticulously eradicated from gardens, before I can even find where the dirt begins to scrape a hole out of that unforgiving, nail breaking, finger scraping, spade bending, lovely native clay soil.  

Perhaps twice in this life of mine the cosmos was at peace; and my gardens, as a whole, projected that inner and outer beauty of perfection for maybe three days before nature brutally saddled it once again with that look of another bad hair day, nullifying my back pain, leg cramping, body contorted efforts to create a thing of lasting beauty.  I cringe and shed a magnificent tear viewing gorgeous photos on other blogs, all which beautifully and artistically show off those persons successful efforts at making their surroundings picture perfect...like in one of those fine garden magazines.

I'm wishing to put in a complaint, cause I've looked high and low, in and out, upside, downside, spin about, whirl around...where in the dag nabbitt doodle dong jeezers are those gardening magazines for the likes of me.  You know...Weeds and Gun, Poorticulture, Southern Trash Illustrated, Birds and Doom, Down and Out Acres, RattleBrain Garden Designs, Martha Stewart's Recycled Tire Gardening, House Ugly, Second Hand Gardener Illustrated, Crimination Gardening, The Contemptible Gardener............sigh.