The sun came out as soon as the rain stopped falling. I slipped out of the back door of the house and took a deep breath. The air felt fresh and clean. A full color rainbow stretched across the sky from one horizon to the other. Droplets of water glistened on blades of grass and tree leaves. Rivulets of water dripped off the hoop building garden, and garage.

The heat earlier in the afternoon had made me stay inside the house. Now, all I wanted was to walk through the yard, despite how wet my feet would get. I wanted to see how the flower beds and garden were doing. Slipping on an old pair of shoes, I stepped off the back deck. The wet grass felt deliciously cool. As I crossed the lawn, I mused, “Gardening is like playing bingo. Getting all my flowerbeds and the garden weeded at the same time is like getting five chips in a row, thus winning the game.”

I checked the front of the garden first. Seeing the freshly weeded first row of plants made me smile. It looked nice and well cared for. That was one chip.

Next, I looked at the large bed of asparagus near the garden. Although I had weeded it recently and have mulched it yearly, many unwelcome weeds had sprung up around the trunks of the mature, fern-topped vegetables. I exclaimed, “Where did those come from?” No chip here! I leaned down and pulled as many as I could before moving on, promising myself to come back to do a more thorough weeding tomorrow.

I walked across the yard to see if the mulched flowerbed along the driveway deserved a chip. It probably wouldn’t since I had not weeded all of it last week. New weeds were already pushing up through the wood chips. The weeds found in the far end of the bed were more mature since that portion hadn’t been weeded as recently. I leaned down and pulled up blossoming bind weed and chickweed. I rationalized, “If I get rid of these weeds before they make seeds, I’ll be closer to winning garden bingo!” Satisfied that I had done what I could for the time being, I moved on.

 The crabgrass I’d pulled from the flowerbed under the kitchen windows had mostly stayed away. The gardening dilemma I had here, was that two plants were going rogue. At first, I thought these flowers were nice plants. My late husband had admired the misty purple Russian sage blossoms. The Spiderwort was given to me at a plant exchange.

Walking around the side of the house to look at the flowerbed along the porch, I wondered if the gardener who gave me the Spiderwort had warned me of its invasive tendencies. I mused, “If she had, would I have listened to her?” I would need a shovel to dig up the Russian sage and Spiderwort, but doubted I would ever entirely get rid of it.

Despite knowing how invasive mint plants are, I planted some in the garden ten years ago. Remembering the big patch of run-a-way mint growing along one of the rows, I made a mental note to pull them out immediately after weeding the asparagus bed. Shaking my head, I rationalized, “At least mint pulls out easily and I don’t mind when it comes back.”

Standing in front of the front porch, I balefully eyed the quack grass coming up around beautiful yellow day lilies. A small unwanted tree peeked out from along the foundation. I cut the tree down every summer, but it always grows back. I questioned, “Would I maintain some control over the quack by dumping a load of woodchips on it each year?”

As the post rainstorm sunshine disappeared behind the trees across the road, the first signs of dusk settled upon the yard. Daylight dimmed and the yard appeared as though I was looking at it through sunglasses. Robins called goodnight to one another. Tree frogs croaked. An owl along the river hooted.

 Relishing this part of the day as much as I had enjoyed the sunny aftermath of the storm, I slowly walked around the house to the back door ruefully thinking, “I’m losing at the game of garden bingo. Getting all my flowerbeds and garden freshly weeded at the same time just never happens. When I get one flowerbed weeded, the weeds in another part of the yard spring up. It’s like someone else shouting, “Bingo! we win!”