"Look," said I as the tiny puffs of white silk drifted through the lazy sunshine, "our entire yard is filled with wishes."

Do you know about wishes, aka some type of seed, not exactly unlike dandelion seeds, but not exactly like them either? Or was that just in my family? We always called them wishes and I've spent my life catching them, making a wish and releasing them into the breeze. I recently passed that bit of lore onto Mort, who was immediately skeptical and asked if his wishes would really come true. I'd love to know what he wished for and make it happen. Unless it was something involving dragons and pirates and sharks and tornadoes and ghosts. Which it probably was.

Anyway, a friend had stopped by as I was admiring the wishes drifting around our yard and she located the abundant source of them and screwed-up her face, "Uh, I hate to tell you this, but those are thistles."

And thus ended any speculation about the source of the spiky weed things that have infiltrated my garden like a million blades of grass that I can spend hours removing and have an entire new crop growing within 4 days.

My garden is so so terrible this year. I've spent more time and money and care and work than all the other years combined and even discounting the rabbits and the thistles, it is horrid. Things that I usually am pawning off on every passer-by because my garden is overflowing? (Hey there! I see you're out on a walk this morning! Would you like some basil/green peppers/jalapenos/tomatoes/ to enjoy as you exercise?) Pitiful. I have planted oregano 6 times. And it refuses to do anything but die. My basil is already going to seed. Spinach and arugula and broccoli rabe went right to seed. My peppers are refusing to grow larger than the size of the palm of my hand. My lettuce is bitter. My broccoli is dinky. Although on the positive, this year's grape tomatoes taste like sunshine on a vine. And I just may have ears of corn as I didn't mistakenly pull it this year thinking it was grass.

Don't you just hate conflicting weather reports? Like when you are supposed to spend the day at a friend's pool and the newspaper is calling for heavy thunderstorms but weather.com is listing 0 chance of precipitation. Who are you to believe? probably whichever one is predicting the weather you would most like to see.