Some of you skeptics will not believe this, but the plants in my yard start a conversation when they see my car pull out. The evil ones [weeds] say, “She’s gone. Grow! Grow! Grow!”
The good-but-lazy ones [flowers and vegetables] say, “She’s gone. Just take a rest until she comes back. What’s she going to do about it? If she gets too rough on us, we can just die for revenge.”
Fortunately, I am onto both sets. With the car parked back in the carport on Saturday morning after two weeks of great fun with my tribes mentioned in the last three blogs, I took them on. I followed massive weed-pulling with cutting last fall’s dead goldenrod to stake my green beans.
I talked, too.
To the evil ones, I said, “Be gone! Be gone! Be gone!” yanking them rudely from the ground. I’m thinking they are not used to being addressed by Shakespeare-loving English majors. 
[Paraphrasing Lady MacBeth’s “out, damned spot” might have been more effective, but I feared Mama might be watching from heaven. Hearing the language, she might take back the small portion of her green thumb that I inherited.]
To the good-but-lazy ones, I followed my best parenting/teaching practices. “I’m very disappointed in you. I had expected you to do your very best even when I was not looking. My car will pull out when I will leave again this summer. I have other tribes, and I will spend time with them. I’m hoping you will do better next time.” Like my children and my students, they nodded their heads with good intentions – at least for the moment.