May flowers? Did you automatically add the old answer beloved of non-gardening romantics? Shame on you! If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you ought to know that there is a more accurate answer to this little saying.

Weeds! Weeds, weeds, and more weeds! Worse yet, some of the flowers are on the weeds, trying diligently to make weed seeds to sow yet more weeds! I'm now shredding newspapers and tucking thick blankets of shreds around the vegetables after pulling the worst of the weeds. It is going to look messy, but I can't afford the amount of straw or other more natural looking mulch it would take to smother the weeds. The little sweet potatoes are holding up their heart-shaped leaves in their open patches of ground in the bowls of mulch around them, and they should cover the paper when they start to form long vines in that bed. I'm going to have to organically bluff about it for the rest of the beds.

All that work and compost from last year has stimulated a bumper crop of weeds. I'm getting a trickle of broccoli and peas joining the greens, but those plants aren't nearly as vigorous as the weeds trying to bury them alive. I keep silently muttering encouragement to myself about what wonderful composting material they are as I pull handful after handful. Baby and Rapunzel are certainly happy to devour them, their loads still shrinking too much to call them compost but looking very brown and fertile and exhaling earthy scents of appreciation for the nutritious green additions.

Part of the weeds are tomato seedlings growing from trimmings containing seeds thrown into the composters. Apparently at least one of them, most likely Baby, doesn't heat up enough to kill seeds put into them. If I had the gardening space, I could have a tomato farm back there from all the wild seedlings springing up in the rows. Since I have plenty of tomato plants from known varieties growing well in their cages, I pull up the wild plants since they might be some mad hybrid monster plant. I gave the ugly duckling the only space that I'll allot to an unknown plant, since it is likely to be some named variety that was accidentally included in the flower packet.

The weeds remind me of the logjam in my organizer. Much of it is caused by unfinished past projects still dawdling along the schedule with the current urgent tasks. Trying to bring order to my schedule is like planting new seeds in an old weed patch. I have a tendency to work on several things at once, which I like to think of as multi-tasking even though that implies that the projects all get done eventually. Some actually do get done, but I find other things to do as well.

Some of the "weeds" were holdovers from an earlier time when they seemed like a good idea. I've still got the paint supplies in my room from the abortive attempt at painting pottery with information on how to do watercolor and tole painting, even though the lady who originally started that program now lives in another state and the diva night was dropped from the women's club schedule. This little crafting flower has become a weed from having no place in my current schedule.

Other weeds come from inheriting weeds from other people's gardens. The actual weeds in the garden are an inheritance from Mom failing to take care of the garden in the last years before she finally gave up and gave it over to me. The weeds took advantage of the lapse and spread rapidly, sowing seeds that could sprout for years. I don't want to leave that kind of inheritance behind, so I'm chipping away at my schedule to clean up the project weeds. It would be a terrible witness to whoever investigated my disappearance if I got Raptured with a room stuffed with projects as it is now. They might think I had gotten buried in a crafting material landslide instead of going up with the saints.

Still, the new garden is producing better than last year's garden despite the weeds. The pedigreed tomatoes are doing very well with the biggest ones starting to bloom. They are lolling in their cages, spreading husky leaves in the sunlight The weather is quite rainy but the afternoon highs are reaching the low 80 degrees F, so the tomatoes are growing well. It feels like early summer now, and that suits the tomatoes just fine.

The last of the spring spinach and mustard is bolting, and I'm clearing it out to put in more heat tolerant vegetables. The early planted summer squash is coming along, with one plant forming buds. I've not quite decided whether or not to plant more since I only need a small supply. People generally like to receive surplus tomatoes far more than surplus squash, although it has not yet been declared a criminal offense by Homeland Security to give them away.

The cats are still occasionally dive-bombed by angry mockingbirds, but the aerial assault has considerably lessened. I'm still not seeing young fledglings hunting for food yet. The robins are diligently hunting for food, subtle flashes of red and brown hopping about the yard and poking around the beds. They keep a wary eye out for the cats lurking among the tall weeds.

The cats are only annoyed by their diligence. Mom gives them frequent lectures about bird hunting with a stern shake of her finger and they just smile benignly at her. They know they are quite secure in the family, especially if they should show up with a dead rat in their teeth occasionally. They've even got their own catnip patch started around the base of one of the pear trees. However, they are largely ignoring it, apparently among the small fraction of felines that don't appreciate the herb.

I finished the patches for the vest and have been sewing them together. I worked in a few done with Fair Isle knitting techniques, so the result is even more blinding than before. I'm getting lots of practice in weaving in yarn ends, and I'm thinking of putting a multi-color ribbing on the vest. I just have to find the strength to sew a bit after I collapse in bed from all that weeding.