Il faut cultiver notre jardin. --Voltaire

Here are but a few of the plants you could find in my parents' garden, past and present:
corn
Asian pears
tomatoes
dates
lettuce
grapes
apricots
watercress
chives
zucchini
plums
gourds
apples
persimmons
plumeria
cucumbers

Here's what growing in my garden:
weeds

My lack of gardening skills is a problem. Trying to tear out a carpet of weeds from my front yard is a huge problem. My front yard is pretty much dead last on my list of priorities, but I always get embarrassed when we have friends over for dinner or a playdate. I know that they're coming up our front walk and looking at the biggest weeds they've probably ever seen. Case in point, my neighbor thought that the four foot high crabgrass choking the life out of my Japanese maple was ornamental grass. She's either just as much of a brown thumb as I am or kindhearted.

DN and I went outside tonight after dinner for what I called gardening and what she called a bug hunt. With my purple gardening gloves, spade, and weeder, I pulled out plants for an hour and a half, finally collecting two huge bags of horse nettles, dandelions, and crabgrass. When I saw how bad the garden on the side of the house looked, I got upset at myself for letting it get to this point. I kept on thinking how blessed we were to live in a house and how poorly we were maintaining the garden. It's frustrating when you know what you have to do, especially when it comes to the responsibilities that comes with home ownership, and how much more effort is necessary. One day I will have raised garden beds and plant heirloom vegetables and fruit for my growing family of five. I just need to pull up fifteen more bags of weeds and we'll be fine.

Around eight thirty, I dragged the two bags across the lawn to the curb for garbage collection and told DN that she had ten more minutes to catch fireflies. As I watched DN wait for each firefly to glow so she could catch it, my annoyance dissipated. Tonight, DN saw a few hummingbirds zipping around our honeysuckle bush, a leaf hopper hanging out on the drainpipe, two rabbits hiding behind our daisies, and fireflies galore. Each time I pulled up a big weed, she was excited to see what kind of creepy crawly would emerge. I really do need to start weeding on a weekly basis rather than a monthly one, but it was nice to be reminded of how enjoyable life could be with the right perspective. Lesson learned.