note to self

June 6, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Note to self: Do not wear a fuzzy sweater when going out to walk around the yard.

Actually, it wasn’t the plush sweater that was the issue; it’s what I did once outside that instigated this note.

I was taking my daily stroll around my garden just to see what’s new, and I came across a couple of hollyhock seedlings in one of my daylily patches. I always have a hard time getting rid of desirable plants, misplaced though they might be, because these volunteers are often sturdier and easier to take care of than the ones I purposely planted. I also figure that anything wanting to live that badly deserves a chance. But hollyhocks in my daylilies? Nope, sorry. Because of their size and the thickness of their stalks, hollyhocks can take over an area, which wouldn’t be so bad, but since they are biennials, living for a year or two and then dying, I would eventually end up with neither hollyhocks nor daylilies.

So, much as it pained me, I dug up those hollyhocks. (I tried to simply pick them as if they were weeds, but the thick roots were already five or six inches deep.) Since I was already calf-deep in that garden plot, I stayed and pulled up a tub’s worth of dead larkspur, creeping Charlie, a couple of leafy spurge plants, and a whole lot of foxtail grasses that had gone to seed. Now those scraggly invaded daylilies have a chance.

I did temporarily leave a couple of other hollyhock babies since I’m not sure if they will be troubling any nearby plants. The New England asters in the area never do well, so perhaps it would be a good time to replant them.

Or not. I’ll have to wait to see how I feel when it comes time to do the larkspur cleanup in that area.

All that was great. No problem. (Surprisingly so since I’d slipped into a pair of sandals to go outside for what was supposed to be a brief gander at the yard — not the best footwear for a sustained bit of work.) I didn’t discover the real issue until I got inside and found my poor sweater covered in long barbed grass seeds that had managed to imbed themselves into the fabric. So, I had to spend as much time cleaning up the garment as I did cleaning up the garden.

Such is the life of a spontaneous gardener!

But still, it would behoove me to pay attention to what I wear outside or else pay attention to what I do outside when I am wearing whatever it is I am wearing.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in gardening, life. Tags: barbed grass seed, cleaning up the garden, daylilies, digging up misplaced plants, foxtail grass, hollyhocks, note to self, volunteer plants. 9 Comments »

A Big To-Do About What To Do

February 3, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Daily writing prompt

Something on your “to-do list” that never gets done.

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Nothing on my to-do list ever gets done for the simple reason that I don’t have a to-do list. If I did have a to-do list, the first thing on the list would be to make a to-do list, which I would not do, so again, the answer would be that nothing on my to-do list ever gets done.

I’m of the firm belief that what doesn’t need to be done today should be put off until tomorrow. And if there is something that needs to be done today? I do it. Simple. If I know ahead of time I will need to do something today (because each day I kept putting it off until tomorrow, and tomorrow finally came), I put a reminder on my calendar. For example, this was the last day to pay my car insurance, which I know because it’s on my calendar, so I did it. But I remembered anyway, so the reminder was simply insurance insurance. (If that doesn’t make sense, no problem; I often try to be clever and only end up being too clever for my own good.) I occasionally leave myself a sticky note to remind me of something I need to remember to do, such as letting a faucet drip during our below freezing nights. I suppose each of those sticky notes could be construed as a list, but a list with a single reminder isn’t much of a list.

I come by leaving myself occasional notes honestly. My father always did it, though my mother never did. In fact, she was a bit bemused by his reminders. She often told the story of coming across a note he wrote before they were married reminding him to marry her. “Would you really have forgotten to marry me?” she supposedly asked. And his answer, “No, but I didn’t want to take a chance.”

The note apparently worked because they did get married. They celebrated their sixtieth anniversary a couple of months before my mother died. The January before their September anniversary, doctors diagnosed my mother with cancer and told her she had three to six months to live. She told them that wasn’t good enough. She needed nine months. The anniversary was that important to her, and she did make it. (The photo accompanying this article is one taken of all us women at the get-together.)

I think I’m getting off the track here. But really, what is there to say about a to-do list that doesn’t list anything to do?