Beans, Bindweed and Burns' Bonie Bell

Yesterday Mr. G and I celebrated our  forty-fourth wedding anniversary. Actually, celebrated isn't the right word.  Mr. G worked on getting the drip pan off the car so he could see whether the leak that he discovered  the day before was coming from a hose or the radiator.   Unfortunately, it was coming from  the radiator.  At least now we know what  we'll be  getting each other as an anniversary gift.😞

On a happier note,  the  eighteenth bean  seed  finally decided to show itself. We now have 100%  germination! The second piece of good news is that we got a nice soaking rain. You can almost hear the plants  breathing a sigh of relief.  They much prefer rain over tap water and seem to  perk up and stand straighter after a nice rain.  Of course, the weeds also love a  soaking rain- as evidenced by the growth spurt the nasty things put on  during the night.  My nemesis for the last few years  has been  bindweed. It is nigh on impossible to eradicate, and reading  that its roots can extend and run more than 20 feet below the soil and that its seeds can that remain viable for as long as 50 years is not very encouraging. I  avoid using herbicides so have been diligently hoeing and digging it out where I can and cutting  it off at ground level  when it's too close to other plants to cultivate. By cutting it off at soil level I'm hoping  to deprive it of the light necessary  for photosynthesis so it will  eventually weaken and die.  I'm pretty sure, though, that the stuff is so persistent that it will  outlive me by a decade or more!

I'm hoping that once the ground dries a little,  we'll be able to begin  working on the second  herb and flower bed on the  other side of the rose arbor. The plan is to relocate the wood hyacinths to the front yard and replace them with iris and shasta daisies from another section of the back yard, where  they'll be joined with some Mexican and Jerusalem sage and  other ornamental herbs and a few flowers. That's the plan, but it could get scrapped or changed like so many of my schemes and  best laid plans that  as Robert Burns wrote, "gang aft agley."

In homage  both to gardening through the seasons, and to  a relationship that has  endured and flourished for  forty four years, I'll leave you with Burns' poem/song,  Bonie Bell.  It seems appropriate, both for its recognition  of the changing seasons and the constancy of  love.

The smiling spring comes in rejoicing, 
And surly winter grimly flies; 
Now crystal clear are the falling waters, 
And bonny blue are the sunny skies. 
Fresh o'er the mountains breaks forth the morning, 
The ev'ning gilds the Ocean's swell; 
All Creatures joy in the sun's returning, 
And I rejoice in my Bonie Bell. 

The flowery Spring leads sunny Summer, 
The yellow Autumn presses near,
Then in his turn comes gloomy Winter, 
Till smiling Spring again appear. 
Thus seasons dancing, life advancing, 
Old Time and Nature their changes tell; 
But never ranging, still unchanging, 
I adore my Bonie Bell.