Okay, so I lied.

I ended my last post with the promise that I would get into the garden “tomorrow” with my camera so I could produce evidence of my essential, if not absolute, victory over bindweed.

And here it is, all of—yoiks, a week?—later, and no such evidence has been produced. In my defense, I will enter the following facts:

a) I am now in Newfoundland, Canada, travelling with husband Steve and both my parents, and have had little time to post, and

b) I did take the requisite picture(s), I just didn’t do anything relevant with them. (Lousy excuse, I know, but the best I could come up with on vacation.)

c) Posting during the day or so before I left (the day or so after the last post) was a physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and political impossibility because I was packing, something at which I am terminally bad, and trying as well to get the garden ready for my two-week absence.

The result is that I didn’t go to sleep at all the night of the 6th. When I finally did finish packing, I went outside to cover various bits of garden scattered here and there about the neighborhood. Temperatures were predicted to fall to 32 F the next night, and having finally gotten a few things to recover after July’s hailstorm, I wanted to try to hang onto them another couple of weeks before admitting that they never were going to produce any vegetables.

So there I was at two-thirty in the morning, headlamp a-glow, setting hoops and stretching plastic covers. Unfortunately, our first flight took off at six a.m., so we had to get up at three-thirty. You can see why I didn’t make it to bed. Also unfortunately, the last flight of the three (for some reason there are no direct flights from Bozeman, Montana, to St. John’s, Newfoundland) didn’t land until fifteen and a half hours later, 1:00 a.m. local time.

And I had a cold, which didn’t improve during the flight(s). I therefore arrived somewhat knackered, and it’s taken days of intense relaxation and over-large meals to bring me to the point where I could once again face my long-neglected responsibilities to my readers.

While I am busy heaping ashes on my head, let me add that I did get the book by James Alexander-Sinclair, and I’ve read it, and it’s wonderful, and I’ll have much more to say about it soon. In other words, the Sock Wars are officially OVER, because, dang it all, you can’t go around insulting someone after winning his book, can you now? It wouldn’t be sporting.

So, coming tomorrow: Bindweed #3: Beating back the jungle. Or, how to grow vegetables on a bindweed-infested patch with no blood, minimal sweat, and very few tears. Being the third installment in the Bindweed Series. See: Bindweed: garden enemy #1 and Bindweed #2: Digging it out.

Coming soon to this blog:
•     Reading and review of James Alexander Sinclair’s 101 Bold and Beautiful Flowers;
•     Hailstorm survivors: More lettuce, anyone?