I gosh me too Campanula! We had such a wet winter here, and I added so many new beds last year which I didn't mulch properly, that I've created quite the mess for myself! I've spent so much time weeding and weed eating over the past two weekends, and it doesn't look like I've done a thing. Oh well, we all create our own problems don't we :) Best of luck to you!

Tammy

I'm spending most of my gardening time weeding out dock and amending the soil where it was growing with hay; also there's a hateful asteraceae that doesn't have a taproot, but rather a nest of roots that cling with huge determination. Most of our other volunteer plants in the beds are cute innocent annuals (though both chickweed and veronica lose their charm when they start to go to seed). And I keep a wary eye on my wild violets. They have great charm and I wouldn't be without them, but I can't let them get out of hand and run over small bulbs and my cultivated violets, which are less vigorous than the wildlings. And I've worked recently down in the bottom of the shade garden, getting out artemisia and a nasty stinking invasive lamiaceae. Overall the weeds aren't a big problem, and I like being out in the garden enjoying the day as I dig.
My husband finally got his motor scythe fixed and has been cutting a lot of grass. We have wide paths in the garden, areas not yet planted, the recently developed allee. DH has to cut and cut, but the period of rapid growth isn't going to go on forever; once it gets hot and dry he'll be able to stop. What I wanted to mention is how mowing the paths civilizes the whole garden and MAKES it a garden. Terracing ground, creating flat areas in the middle of a slope, does the same thing. I think many of us believe that flowers, or ornamental plants, are the heart of a garden, but a good part of it is just things like the contrast between mowed and not-mowed, and flat areas with wide shallow steps.
Melissa

oh absolutely, Melissa. We also wield a ferocious strimmner with glee and the pleasure of seeing order emerge from the tangled growth is wonderful. And then there is the half-moon cutter. A job I find quite boring but the neatly shaped edges truly civilise my rampant plot.
When we took over this allotment, we spent the first two years adding horse and raised beds - 23 of them, ranging from several metres long and 2m wide to some which are only 2m long and 1.2m wide. Every time a bed is completely cleared, it is a little victory against chaos, and involves an amount of effort I can cope with without becoming undone.
Mostly though, I learnt a crucial lesson very early on in this gardening game - do not look at the big picture - it is too huge. Instead, get down really, really close to the soil. All those weeds which seem so insurmountable emerge from one tiny place in the ground. A quick lever and each one is gone, leaving the precious seedling or shrublet or vegetable unharmed (and liberated). Only in the mass does the prospect of eternal weeding seem so insurmountable. Literally, one (smallish) step at a time.
It is not really fair to blame these 'invasive' plants when it is down to our laziness in allowing life to do its determined thing, putting off the inevitable culling back for another few days or weeks (or years).

Oh, I love this! Yes, indeed, don't look at the big picture! Yes, much of what makes a garden is the contrasts! Oh, Melissa and Suzy, I'd love to see your gardens, and for you to come visit mine!

But what you both really need is convicts and volunteers. We've been working on the weeds in the cemetery rose garden with a vengeance. One of our volunteers is an old man with a long white beard, who is a retired mathemetician but looks like he's homeless, and comes out and weeds and weeds and weeds in the rose garden. We thank him, feed him whenever we can (he loves our pruning party's food), and clear away the stacks of weeds that he leaves behind. The convicts on the Sheriff's work crew have been weeding a lot, too, and spreading mulch. The rose garden is the tidiest ever - there are still weeds, of course, but it's much cleaner.

At home, instead of volunteers and convicts, I have a newly retired husband who has learned to recognize oxalis, grass and bedstraw, and has been laboring to rid my planting beds of all of them. One of the sweetest things my beloved has said to me is, "I'm going outside to weed for a while." Oh, be still, my heart!
Anita

ah anita - how marvellous. What could possibly be better than sharing your garden (just like everything in a marriage - more or less). And truly, I frequently fantasisise about a californian vacation visiting gardens I have heard about but never seen. In my dreams, my sweetheart and I sit cosily, side by side on a gigantic kneeler, chatting, pulling, chatting some more then stepping back to admire the clean sweep of earth. In reality, he wields a fierce hoe - I only lose the occasional leek or parsnip and I have 2 boys who I can simply point out the huge mallow, acanthus or dock and put a spade in their hands - they set to with vim. Am training up the grandaughter already.

Be still, my twinging back! Your accounts brought me solace, of sorts. Nice to know I'm not the only gardener being paid back by Mother Nature. This past winter in New England has been exceedingly mild. Thus, all the weed seeds germinated. Creeping Charley is smothering out my Real Plants with its tenacious runners and clusters of small round leaves. But (I agree, Camps), mea culpa, for not cleaning and mulching the beds last fall.

The spouse is totally NOT a garden person, except he's happy to eat the produce. Shades of the Little Red Hen fairytale! ("Who will help me plant my wheat? ...Who will help me bake my bread?") He's not a volunteer; more a conscript. For brawn chores such as shoveling manure into wheelbarrows.

So I'm on my own. Which, during a long day of weeding, gets boring. So I went to the library and discovered small (size of a phone) unabridged narrated recordings of whole books. One plugs in one's own earbuds and supplies a AAA battery to the tiny device, then one can weed entertained, with the device in one's chest pocket. They are usually called "Playaways". I suppose an MP3 gadget would work too. But the Playaways are pre-recorded, ready to go.

Only downside is my dirty ears, from replugging earbuds in with dirty gloves on after they fall out.

Carol