It's not really gardening -

it's more like hacking through a jungle with a machete. In fact, I'm using an axe, my wood saw and only rarely, the clippers.

I got pretty inspired by the garden show in Gig Harbor last weekend. Everyone's garden was so very lovely. And tamed. And weed-free. Oh, I know - they've worked on them like crazy people for weeks. With probably a team of helpers too. It's not like they look like that all the time. It's just for a weekend, to show off for the garden tour.

But in my fantasy world I should have a garden that looks like all those magazine spreads of fabulous cottage gardens, kitchen gardens, beach view decks with fire pit, and a huge patio with the built in kitchen, pizza oven and fireplace all spread out. Maybe a tiki bar in the corner too. In my dream house I have all of it. It's a beach-front farm with gourmet kitchen patio. Oh, I almost forgot the pool. There's one of those too. With a cabana, outdoor shower and guest house. Why limit your dreams?

Instead I have a tiny little postage stamp patio. And a teeny weeny little patch of grass with a few plants in the borders. A crunch of too many tomato plants in a corner near the back door. And then everything else at the moment is weeds higher than the fence. Or ivy slowly creeping in and covering what I thought was the front yard.

My next door neighbor is an empty lot of green things that will continue to live and take over the earth, even if we have a nuclear or global warming disaster that takes us all out. Ivy. Blackberries. Creeping morning glory or chokeweed junk. Holly trees. You can't kill them. I've tried - repeatedly. Nothing works. But the hacking is necessary, because if I don't make a tiny little dent over here on my side by the fence, then by next summer, you won't even know my house is here. The jungle will grow right over the fence, over the house and continue on.

The back yard neighbor is a rental house with kids who only stay there for 6 months or a year at a time, and nobody owns a lawn mower or any other garden type tool. They don't even go outside. So it might as well be a jungle too. In between renters, somebody comes by and hacks down the chin-tall weed-grass. But at this time of year, it's so contrained by one single yard, that it's bursting through all the little fence cracks trying to break free.

So I'm out there the last day or so trying to tame the jungle. I can't really call it "gardening." The cat's don't care.

And if you're curious about what my little casa/home studio actually looks like - here's a picture of the front today. It's a work in progress and clearly I need to do a little hacking in the front yard too.