Weed 'em & Freedom. +America.

Happy 4th of July weekend y'all!  PHEW! It's been nearly a month since my last post and a lot has happened--I turned in my thesis on Autoimmune Thyroid Disease and shortly after I graduated from the Nutrition Therapy Institute. I gave myself a significant brain-break afterwards, but spent quite a few hours bent over getting sun-burned weeding! I had no idea that there would be soo many weeds!!! A lot has changed in my DUG in the past month.

My folks came out for my graduation ceremony June 17th and I thought, instead of doing touristy things we've already done, we'd have some family fun time weeding my garden. My garden desperately needed my attention and, perhaps selfishly, I wanted all the extra hands I could get! My folks and I rode some of Denver's shared B-Cycle's over to the garden from downtown--they were not amused when we arrived 4 miles later to find an overgrown plot that my Mom was convinced needed to be roto-tilled and started over. I was offended. Yes--lots of weeds, but I could see some vegetables in there. Below you can what a weed patch my plot developed into; you can also see the nice clean plots just beaming perfection behind mine :) 

MAmy (Amy & Mom squished together) and I spent maybe 30 minutes working on the area most clearly recognizable and developed (the kale/ chard) before it started raining. I let her use my gloves and I got my hands in the dirt. I felt like we put a good dent in the plot; I felt good about our time there. Clearing away that much space made me feel like I could successfully weed the whole plot and find hidden treasures just waiting to be discovered. I had a better idea and feel of what was a weed and what wasn't. Well the garden really exploded within the next week. By June 26th everything shot up at least twice its height and I ended up spending a good 5-6 hours tearing weeds up and getting dirty with the rolly polly's! I had a blast discovering what was underneath--cilantro, broccoli, carrots, beets, butter-head lettuce, and (maybe) eggplant. I also found some sunflowers. I think I weeded the zinnia's and unfortunately no peppers sprouted. However, I am currently swimming in vegetables.

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Three days later...

Tonight there was even more growth and it was even more amazing to me. I find myself gushing over the plants like pets. I'm honestly worried about going out of town for the next four days. I'll have a chance to water every day but I think it's going to be time to harvest some of the kale and definitely the cilantro! Out of everything growing, I've become the most sensual with the cilantro; I absolutely love the smell of it on my fingertips. The carrots seem to have a ways to go, as well as the beets. For me, something seemingly wonderful out of all this is how many bees are attracted to the broccoli--they're broccoli-philic bees! There are more bees gathering pollen from my broccoli alone than everywhere else in the garden combined.

Everything is really close together still, but whenever I have tried to move things they don't end up surviving. I feel like it will be important to pull up whatever is ready as soon as it's ready. I don't even know how I'll go about determining if the broccoli is ready or not... I hope I'll know when I see it.

--Kate, friend of the bees  :bz

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