It would appear that once again we have skipped straight from winter to summer here in the Chicago area. It is nearly 90 degrees today and every fan in the house is running on high. My husband took AJ to the park this morning and I spent a couple of hours trying to whip the garden into shape. I barely made a dent in it. The weeds aren�t even the biggest part of the problem. The most frustrating part is the grass. It refuses to grow in the lawn and yet it refuses NOT to grow in the flower beds. Keeping the yard looking cared for is a never-ending battle from April through June. By the end of June, it�s usually hot enough that the weeds have given up trying so hard, which is fortunate because the mosquito population has usually moved in by then, making weeding along the creek in the back almost impossible.

I have become a pathological puller of weeds. I used to make fun of my mother for doing this. She couldn�t walk out the front door of our house without falling to her knees and pulling up any weeds she could reach. I have become similarly possessed. While AJ is running around with a soccer ball, I am usually on the edges of the yard pulling up garlic mustard and ground ivy by the handful.

Although I have had many spectacular container gardens on balconies and porches and window ledges in my past, this is the first real garden I have ever taken care of. I take the weeds very personally. They are an affront to my gardening skills. I treat them with no mercy.

The heat of the last few days has kicked the garden into high gear. The dicentra (also known as bleeding heart) exploded out of the ground in record time and is already covered in pink and white blossoms, nearly three weeks earlier than last spring. The yard is covered in assorted pink and yellow flowers. We�ll have fresh flowers for vases from now until October. AJ helped me plant petunias and pansies in assorted containers around the yard, including the hanging baskets on the porch, which are now being whipped around alarmingly in the fierce wind that has kicked up in the last hour.

I�m not sure where AJ got this idea, but he decided that in addition to a good drink of water, what our newly planted flowers really needed was a serenade. One by one, he walked to each container, crouched down by it and began to sing �Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.� If that doesn�t help them grow, I don�t know what will.

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