The Baboon Congress, Weather

Fall Gardening – A Love/Hate Relationship

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Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee

As most of you already know, I love my yard and my gardens. My long-range plan (no grass, all flowers) is coming to fruition in the front and in the back I’m enjoying planting in my bales and along edges until I’m out of dogs.

fallgarden1But as much as I love gardening in the spring and throughout the summer, I just run out of gardening steam in the fall. Right about the time the grass stops growing is when I quit wanting to garden. I always say I’m going to plant some more bulbs or move this patch of lilies to another spot or some other fall garden activity, but it never happens.  I only go out and finally bring in the hoses and do some yard clean up when the weather gets below freezing at night on a regular basis.  I even outsource the leaf raking to the Young Adult (for dog-sitting time).

fallgarden3Occasionally I’ll be forced into action. Last year before tim moved I ended up with about 18 big hostas from his yard. When I got home from his place, I took my gloves and shovel out immediately without even going in the house.  Got everything transplanted within a half hour because I was worried that if I went in the house and sat down I might not go back out. Same with items I got from Edith a couple of weeks ago.  But that’s the limit of my fall gardening energy.

So my autumn yard looks like a brown and rust version of my summer garden and my bales are breaking down. Every year I try to lengthen my “caring season” but so far I haven’t found a motivation that keeps me really engaged past the middle of September!

What makes you drag your feet?

44 thoughts on “Fall Gardening – A Love/Hate Relationship”

      1. I meant cramps make me drag my feet.
        The weak joke was suggested by the fact that I drug my feet to the computer at 5:15 this morning. I get cramps every morning in my right foot and lower calf that make it feel like tibia and fibia are splintering. I am going to call them clydehorses.

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  3. We have lots of fall work left, but the worst jobs (taking down the steel hog panels we use for pea fencing, rolling up the soaker hoses, taking down the rabbit fencing, cutting out the spent raspberry canes) are done. Now we need to trim the peonies, day lilies, and irises, and dead head the roses and hydrangeas . Friday, husband is going to our local stockyard for a couple of pickup loads of beautifully composted manure. It is only $20 a load. After that is tilled into the garden beds, we will be almost done. I suppose we should make sure the down spouts aren’t clogged with leaves.

    I drag my feet when the thing I need to do makes me anxious that I might fail doing it or that it won’t work the first time. This year we had to electronically submit our psychology license renewals, complete with electronic signatures. The fear of that was enough for me to drag my feet until yesterday, when with the able assistance f our agency tech guy, it went through the ether just fine.

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    1. Fall maintenance is one of the reasons I never want to own a cabin “up north”. Every fall I hear the tales of docks and boats and water pipes. no thanks.

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  4. i have so many areas that i could spend a week and still not be caught up on i think it is the sheer size of the undertaking that scares you. i know its like how do yo eat an elephant (one bite at a time) but it feel overwhelming. i have two new business ventures i am launching an old one that is paying the bills that i am good at but it is far from on autopilot.
    i try to think of it as an opportunity to shine but….it would be nice to bask in the glow rather than play catch up.

    on the positive side my lawn is a piece of cake these days. my neighbors cut me slack for not fixing the nightmare i inherited and it is not all that bad its just not a show piece. how nice to have a lawn on autopilot. a mowing every 2 or 3 weeks (because it is so thin it hardly matters) and a raking abiot now after all the leaves have fallen is all that is required.

    taxes… why not get it done ahead of time really

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  6. Any task where I don’t really know what I’m doing. I make a list each weekend for the upcoming week, and the things that get carried over are invariably the ones that need research, or help from someone else. This week the repeats are:
    – make dentist appt. (haven’t heard a stellar review for a dentist here yet)
    – paint kitchen
    – clean out a mildew-y room in friend Walken’s basement
    – get computer cleaner back up and running
    – find more shelving for basement
    – help my mom heal enough to return (from Extended Care) to her little apartment

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  9. Writing blog posts. But I will try for this group. Hard enough getting motivated to do my own blog most days, and I seldom post in the first place–monthly always seemed reasonable for some who thinks he has little of substance to say but does it because he’s an author and that’s what authors are supposed to do.

    Also maintenance chores like cleaning out the garage, organizing closets or offices, fall yard work (lots of branches and leaves to deal with).

    Biggest one is doing our estate planning! Seems that coming to grips with one’s mortality is a great excuse to drag feet.

    Chris in O-town

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        2. And we also talked about it at Blevins’ a couple of weeks ago. Blevins’ Book Club page is updated, but here’s the next couple of books:

          Beans of Egypt Main
          Carolyn Chute

          Under Milk Wood
          Dylan Thomas

          December 4, 2 p.m.
          Occasional Caroline’s

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        6. OK, my post-it has Possession on it as well but I have stars next to Beans and Under – and a note about Christmas-y!

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        8. And it doesn’t matter to me at all what we read. In my world I’d read all three but I know not that many folks live in my world!!!

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  10. What causes me to drag my feet? Almost everything, but the most constant thing over the years is cleaning the bathroom(s). My dream is to someday be able to afford a cleaner who will come in and do that for me.

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  11. It is expected to be 70 degrees here tomorrow. We will have no good excuse to drag our feet over yard work. I only work until 10:00am. so off to the stockyards we will go.

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  12. I do the fall yard work for other people, so I don’t get to my own yard till spring most years. The work is more enjoyable in spring, when the earth is waking up.

    For some reason I find taxes fairly easy to deal with, although you would think I would procrastinate on it, since I usually have to pay in, being self-employed. Taxes differ from a lot of other obligations in that there is a beginning and an end to it, and a right answer to arrive at, and then you’re done with it for a whole year. That makes it sort of rewarding, or at least it seems so to me.

    Cleaning makes me drag my feet. There’s no end to it. Ever.

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  14. I will not be signing up for blog posts. My life is not that predictable, and every topic I think of I have done or it s just whining.

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