Goat Head Blog

*No, this post does not contain an announcement.*

That being said, I have been promising myself for months that I would get back to blogging before Baby #2 made his/her appearance.  Gradually, that has turned into a vow that I will post at least once before I'm knocked off my feet (and probably off my rocker too) by the next little tidal wave in my life.

It has been a long summer of more things than I even want to recount, but prevalent among them, a garden that my neighbor and I have prodded and urged and muscled and willed and prayed to produce.  Alongside the garden, there is the lawn that I dreamed of, that Ben and I have watered and wished out of the ground.  Of all that has happened in the last few months, those two things have been two of the best.  They have been my escape from many less pleasant aspects of the summer, especially from simply waiting.  I hope you will understand, then, why the first thing to resurface on this blog is a gardening analogy.

Our young crops and probably the source of my sanity.

One of the first things I discovered when we moved into our house here were some nasty little thorns that inhabit just about every square inch of land outside and somehow find their way inside too.  Eventually, I found out that the spiny little pests had a name: goat heads.

The beginnings of hope...

They were at the forefront of my mind when I decided that I wanted our lawn to be a foot-friendly place, free from thorns and thistles.  Despite the weeds that had grown rampant in the new grass while Ben and I were both too frantically busy to contain them, I thought I had succeeded rather well, until my grandparents, former Arizonians themselves, came one day to visit.  While touring our garden, my grandpa knelt down and pointed out a stray weed that we spreading itself over the ground beside the fence.  "Do you know what this is?" he asked me.  "This is called goat head.  If you don't get this up, you're going to have some nasty stickers out of it."

To my dismay, I began seeing that same pernicious little weed at the edges of our lawn.  School began again, and I found that after Ben would leave for work, I would spend entire mornings in the yard, yanking up weeds by the hand-full.  The goat heads in our garden were already sprouting green thorns, ready to drop them and no matter how many I disentangled from our precious grass, there were always more.  I felt outnumbered and overwhelmed, bending over my over-sized belly to get at them, while behind me Addie whined to be taken inside.

It took a little over a week and some help from my husband, but we got the little invasion under control.  I've noticed, however, that they don't seem ever to stop.  No matter how many I throw over the fence and how carefully I gather the dropped thorns to pitch them over the propane tank, there's always at least a sprout somewhere.

Well, I've decided that this blog has been and will continue to be something like the little goat head weeds.  Sometimes, posts will be rampant (and probably rather irritating too).  Sometimes, they'll pop up here and there, just often enough to prove that we're still here, still in the desert, and sometimes, they'll disappear for months at a time, only to show up uninvited and without forewarning - quite randomly.  My hope is that someday, I'll be able to write more like I'm learning to garden, in steady, sustained and predictable patterns, but for now, this blog is going to be more like the thorns that have (rather literally) punctuated my experience here.  For now, it is merely a stubborn survivor. :)