Family Mellmann

I was ready.  Gardening clothes pulled out of their basket.  Muck boots lined up by the door.  Garden gloves at the ready.  Mental exercises (to get psyched up for doing battle with burs and thistles) completed.  Let the gardening commence. Oh, wait.  First, I have to fix the tractor tires; three were underinflated and one was completely off the rim.  Launch YouTube.  Find video on how to inflate unseated tire.  Dig up a tie-down strap and find a screw driver.  Locate battery-powered tire pump.  Locate battery-powered tire pump...battery.  Whose dumb idea was this?  Locate car jack.  Weave and climb around two motorcycles and a ladder to retrieve the jack (how is it that with two cars in a four-car garage we still can't get at the tools?).  Weave and climb, while carrying heavy car jack, back to the tractor.  Is it time to start drinking yet?  Put a tourniquet on the completely flat tire.  Oh, first, jack up the front end of the tractor.  NOW, put a tourniquet on the flat tire.  Se

My garden this year is a disaster.  We started out with a busy spring; Patrick’s graduation, helping get him ready to launch and move across the country, then our own scramble to prepare the house for the painter.  Throw in a little rental "turnover" for added excitement and there you have it.  Then I was gone for nearly a month as I traveled to Arizona (to deliver Patrick’s junk to him), visited with family, and drove around checking out property.  By the time I returned to Vermont, it was brutally hot with the requisite insane humidity.  If that wasn't enough to ensure that no garden work got done, it rained almost every day...to the point of flooding.  Needless to say, my garden has been...neglected. I didn’t get much spring clean up done, no weeding, no Preen-ing, and no mulching.  I haven’t planted ANY annuals for that splash of all-summer color.  My roses have bloomed and “gone over” and several had started to form hips before I could get out there to deadhead and p