The rain, however, turned my gardens into jungles! The perennial border on the south side of my house was actually really easy to weed, because the perennials crowded out the weeds for the first time ever. They are huge, past my waist, and the little monarda plants I installed last year threaten to take over (that'll be gorgeous!). The ferns by our back door, normally about 3 feet, are as tall as I am. Anna-Grace will disappear without crouching in her secret hiding place among the ferns!
One serious downer, though. The ground under my grape vines is infested with bindweed. Gaargh! There is no way I will be able to keep that under control, and poisoning it will kill the grapes, so I'm just going to have to put down black plastic, at least for most of the summer, to kill as much as I can. It won't look very attractive - I was hoping to make nice grass there this year - but if I can kill it now, maybe I can sow grass seed in the fall and get ahead of it.
So I will now return to my summer schedule - I can get out there and weed or pick flowers from 6:30 am to 8am without breaking into a sweat (yeah! I hate heat!) then do all my millions of other projects inside until evening. I wish we lived in Eden, where it was never hot nor cold, there were no weeds to fight, and "tilling the earth" was a pleasure. But alas, we deal with the effects of the fall, and try to turn our little plots into Edens of our own. And that, in my opinion, is a noble endeavor.