Okay, the next time I start off on some half-witted semi-mystical gibbering about the wondrous magic of seeds, somebody, please, thrash me soundly.

Really. I mean it. You hear any sort of insane babbling issuing from my lips which includes rhapsodizing about how amazing it is that dry little lifeless bits can suddenly spring into green goodness, I expect said words to evoke a sharp and violent response.

I would especially appreciate it if you'd do your best John Cleese imitation while administering the thrashing and yell, "You cretinous waste of protoplasm, don't you know WEEDS come from seeds, too?"

(We'll save why I feel a need to be smacked by eccentric men with foreign accents to another time. Today's topic is weeds and by gum I'm going to stick to it.)

Oh be quiet.

Yep, as you may have guessed, biblical rains followed by about a week of sauna type heat means that every weed seed on my property has decided to germinate. We are talking approximately a bazillion weeds, give or take a dozen or so.

What you need to know about me is that I am pathologically lazy. While I love creating gardens and adore planting things, I will do almost anything in the world to avoid weeding. I mean, I have been known to do freaking HOUSEWORK to avoid weeding, for crying out loud.

I know. That scares me too.

The other thing you need to know about me is that I am um, er, ah frugal when it comes to my gardens. (Tightwad is such a perjorative word, don't you find?)

My fiscal responsibility--oh, who am I trying to kid here? Alright, my cheapness means that I grow a lot of stuff on from seed for my gardens, and that I do a lot of dividing plants.

For instance, that big clump of hosta I got at the plant exchange a few weeks ago divided out to just under 100 plants.

The bed where those hosta now reside has been the scene of a vicious battle between my laziness and my cheapness. But seeing that the weeds were about to rocket off and smother the hosta, today my cheapness won and I weeded that bed.

It was stupidly hot today.

It was stupidly humid.

There were bugs.

I would like to say that I weeded with a song on my lips and joy in my heart. Unfortunately, that is the kind lie that if you said "cross my heart and hope to die" after spouting it, you'd be immediately struck by lightning, then hit by a dump truck after which a chasm would open under your mangled body and you would fall into a pit of lava.

So no, I was not a happy little ray of sunshine when this work was done.

But the good news is that it is done and with time the hostas will leaf out, shade out all the weeds beneath them, and I won't have to weed them again. That's why I have so many hosta on this property--one good clean-up in the spring and they are good to go for the rest of the year.

Wouldn't it be cool if housework worked the same way?

--Marn