You all know that I love gardening in the spring and summer. And that I am horrible at gardening in the fall. I’m not sure but I think it’s too much delayed gratification. Anything you do in the fall isn’t really going to give you results until spring. Or maybe I’m just worn out after the spring and summer hours pulling, hacking and digging.
In any case, over the weekend I had to FORCE myself to get out and do a little clean up and plant some bulbs and tubers. I added some more tulips to the front boulevard and also two patches of daffodils. I moved my yellow and purple dwarf iris a bit (they were getting swallowed up by lilies) and I also added some Open Your Eyes dwarf iris tubers this year
I had put this off over the last couple of weekends, using YA’s accident/surgery as an excuse and, truth be told, I have been very busy, but 2 weekends in a row, the gardening was on my list and just didn’t get done. So now I feel an immense sense of satisfaction and relief. Why can’t I get myself to do gardening in the fall, when I know it will feel great when I’m done?
How do you get yourself motivated?
Trail Baboon 
I usually have this same issue, VS, and last year I did literally nothing. Left dead flower heads for the winter birds, did virtually no cleanup. Paid for it this spring, so I am more motivated. I am going to actually write it in on my October calendar a few times. (September is Book Sale.) Will let you know if that works!
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Like BIR, we needed to experience a Spring after no fall cleanup to get motivated to do fall cleanup.
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i use a shock collar
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My parents were friends with a couple that had two kids, two thoroughly disgusting kids. Bill and Lynne were nasty considered individually, plus they fought nonstop. If my parents thought my sister and I were misbehaving, especially if we were bickering, my mom or dad would say, “You two are behaving just like Bill and Lynne.” We would gasp at the shame of that and stop doing whatever we were doing.
That little trick still works for me. If I’m being lazy or cowardly or loose with the truth, I can tell myself, “Hey, Steve, you are acting just like ______ _____.” If the comparison is accurate, I might gasp and shape up.
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Lately it’s been things like “oh-my-gosh-a-complete-stranger-is-going-to-come-live-with-us-for-three-weeks” (beginning of the summer) or “I-don’t-want-to-put-plastic-on-the-back-porch-again-what-else-can-I-do…ooh-here’s-some-paint-I’ll-paint-then-I-have-an-excuse…” (last weekend – the back porch trim was gross with sticky stuff from prior years’ plastic – found a different solution that does not involve any sort of tape on trim to try this year). Or, as an alternative, get a buddy to help so I can laugh while I do the thing I don’t want to do.
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I had a good friend come over to help with some fix-up projects when I first bought my house. One project was to remove staples from the living room and dining room floors where I had torn out the old carpet. She spent considerable time sitting on the floor prying and pulling with a screwdriver and pliers. When she pulled out the last one, she gave a sort of “oof” sound and said “…and I”ll thank you to never use the word ‘staple’ in my presence again.”
When she and her husband bought a house, I helped with some of their projects too.
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The buddy system is brilliant – when I was doing organizing with people, I would tell them, “Never go in there alone.”
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I was thinking yesterday about the fall cleanup. We have to prune out spent raspberry canes, trim the daylilies, irises, and hydrangeas, and, when the garden is done producing, clean all that up. We want to till into the vegetable garden a pickup load of composted manure from the local stockyards this fall. I think that will happen on Veterens Day, as I get that day off.
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Someone on here mentioned earlier this summer that their hydrangeas were no longer blooming; your mention of trimming yours made me think of this. Depending on what kind of hydrangea you have, your trimming in the fall may be the problem. Here’s a link to a site that explains the logistics for when to prune them: https://www.gardeners.com/how-to/pruning-hydrangeas/8852.html
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Ours are the kind we can trim in the fall.
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Actually, they are not and we do prune them in the Spring. Thanks,PJ. I forgot and would have done too much work this fall!
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It is the clematis I can trim in the fall. It is all coming back to me.
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It was probably me..too late now. Hostas and peonies there now!!
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Hope you remember next fall.
Hans is such a control freak, and knows virtually nothing about gardening or the various plants in our garden, it’s a disaster to let him loose there unsupervised. Before you know it, he has cut virtually everything to a nub. He’s aghast at the prospect of having to look at dead leaves on the branches of the hydrangeas all winter. Yesterday he decided to put our vegetable to bed for the winter. When I asked what he had done with the 20 or so, big unripe tomatoes still on the plants, he admitted he had thrown them in the garden waste container. I asked him to please retrieve them. Some are so big, I’m sure they’ll ripen on the sunny windowsill in the kitchen. Smaller ones will be transformed into a roasted green tomato salsa.
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Oh my god vs, I just realized that what you’re saying is that you dug up your hydrangeas and replaced them with hostas and peonies. That’s really too bad, but so it goes.
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Yep that’s the sad story. It really wasn’t a good place for a hydrangea, growing through the fence and my neighbor was having to deal with it on his side a lot and we could never get anything other than green flowers out of it no matter what we tried. YA did the overwhelming majority of the digging up as this was a personal pet peeve of hers.
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leave the hosta and peonies alone
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No worries. Hostas and peonies have nothing to fear in my world
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What’s your problem, tim? I have no animus toward either hostas or peonies, I’m merely lamenting that the hydrangeas apparently bit the dust, perhaps because of human error.
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my response was after i read her comment before i read yours pj
i thought she said she was trimming hostas and peonies
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The part of my job I dislike the most is doing case notes after therapy sessions. My agency wants the notes done within 1 working day of the session. If I don’t get them done on time, I procrastinate even more and do them on Friday. I really dislike spending the last day of the week playing catch up, so I force myself to do the notes the day of the session . I motivate myself by thinking how good it feels to have a low pressure Friday. This strategy works most of the time.
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Years ago I learned a painful lesson regarding this particular chore. I could not start seeking a new job until I spent 6 weeks reconstructing case notes, because I procrastinated doing them. To my credit I had many hand written notes to work from, so I knew exactly what I had done. After that I did it differently. Now I add 15 min between each session to do them. And I am ruthless with myself about it, which is easy once I remember that particular fix that was entirely my doing. It makes a weird schedule, but I never end up with weeks of undone notes.
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RIse and Shine Baboons,
I am finally off the pain killer enough to string a few words together. They hit me hard this morning, so then I slept and I was having nutty drug dreams that were not that different than the disorganized thoughts I was having awake. I am watching “stupid TV” that requires nothing of me yet keeps me happy. I have been trying to read a hoarded stash of material, but I just fall asleep.
Much of my fall work will be neglected this year, for obvious reasons. My flower beds need weeding badly, but that won’t happen unless I can talk my friend into it. And she has other stuff to do. Before surgery, I did get my tomatoes and other veggies taken down. Lou will have deconstruct the flowers, but he asked me not to do that because they were still blooming so vigorously. We have raspberries that need to be picked now, too.
On the rehab front, I have walked twice outside this morning, and I can reliably do a leg lift. What a weird experience to have to relearn such a basic move as a leg lift.
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It really brings home to you how much you take for granted, doesn’t it?
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Well said
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Completely OT: “SAINT PAUL! Don’t miss Shawn and Mary Chapin Carpenter Together On Stage at The O’Shaughnessy at St. Catherine University on Oct 12th!
The longtime friends share the stage as an intimate acoustic duo, swapping songs and stories.”
For tix: https://smarturl.it/scw9do
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i really like mary chapin carpenter
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Are you familiar with Shawn Colvin, tim? I think you’d really like her.
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my motivation always comes from imagining the plus minus scale of what if i didn’t do this and got the consequences vs what if i did it and was wildly successful with it
i am such a gullible audience
i keep believing me
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i miss gardening and i don’t
having a rental life with an bad landlord makes me not think about being a good steward for the sake of it. i know i should make it more beautiful out there in the world so i pick up scraps of paper and plastic bags along my walks in daily life but don’t plant hosta son ground i won’t be around to enjoy. my house wher i began hosta gardening was thick and lush and a renter moved in and dig them up and trashed them because he dint like them
he was a pip
when i left my house with lots of hosta i transplanted then at my sisters house and my moms condo and they both think they are too thick
i will split them in the spring unless i get motivated in the next 45 days
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Has everyone on here been watching the Ken Burns Country Music series on tpt? What a great series. I’m learning things about a lot of the performers that I didn’t know before. Really enjoying the series.
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Yes. Each episode is leaving us entertained and impressed. So interesting. An artist of history is presenting artists, and it could not be better. We could not figure out who Willie Nelson was in his Nashville days. Tomorrow is my Dolly and I hope Emmy Lou.
Burns has done an outstanding job covering women’s contribution and how they were treated with condescension. The montage of “little girl, and little lady” introductions made that point.
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Makes you want to drag out all those old vinyl albums, doesn’t it?
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Last Wednesday we were watching it in my hospital room. The nurse and the CNA were coming in and out to see to my needs, and they also got excited—who’s that, that’s Johnny Cash, who is Kitty Wells. their reactions were great.
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The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album(s), “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” are in the collection of vinyl I gave to tim.
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Okay everybody, posting this at the end of the day. I’m fessing up to yet another way I get motivated. The piece that ran today I wrote and got ready to post on Friday. I knew if I didn’t do the gardening over the weekend I’d have to write a whole new post Sunday night to get it ready for today. Is it cheating if I got the gardening done.?
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A Trail Baboon True Confession.
And we saw it here first!
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I would threaten to impeach you, but then I would have to offer to lead this, and I don’t think I am up to it. Go ahead. Spread ethical violations.
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I actually think that was kind of cleaver, VS.
My rule is: Use or do whatever works.
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Hi–
The real job keeps interfering with my blog reading and posting.
I am still working on the home remodeling project I started last summer. We got a lot done, but then college started again or a show or winter or I was tired or something interfered.
Daughter really doesn’t like loud noises, like me pounding nails or running drills, so I try to either work around her or she puts her headphones on and plays loud music.
Course this spring my leg was messed up so that was my excuse. And then waiting on a cousin to get us baseboard trim. We finally went with someone else and it’s been in the garage for a month or more along with the two new doors. And I really don’t have an excuse except for sooner or later Kelly will want to put her car in the garage.
I need deadlines.
The show will open so I have to finish the set. Guess I better start working on it.
I’ve also learned if it’s something simple like a door or wall, then no sweat, I’ll get that up tomorrow. But the weird shaped ramp that has a bend in it… I’ll have to think about that a bit more. And a bit longer. And then maybe see if the theater elves will build it tomorrow.
I’m working on that; stop procrastinating and just build it!
(I like to have a clear understanding in my head before I start. But sometimes I just have to start and it will figure itself out.)
I was replacing gas struts on the tops of the orchestra shells. And they come compressed with a bracket to hold them compressed. But the pins were not in the right place. I stared at it for weeks. I even tried a few things and they didn’t work and I stared at them some more. Then a student asked what I was doing and as I explained it to him the solution came to me. Eureka!
Remember Ben, when you’re stuck it helps to say the problem out loud.
Remember ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’?
I told this same kid about ‘Gumption Traps’.
“Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You’re so sure you’ll do everything wrong you’re afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than “laziness” is the real reason you find it hard to get started”
― Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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Nice quote – I’d forgotten that one.
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The eternal optimist in me loves gardening in the fall. I move plants that are struggling where they are in hopes of rescuing them. I plant a few new plants to perk up areas that need help and give me something new to look forward to. My biggest encouragement to get out in the garden is to take photos of the late August, early September garden beds. Looking at the garden through a photograph really shows where you need improvements. I did this recently and found i was in desperate need of more burgundy or gray foliage plants in several areas. The contrasting foliages (or lack thereof) really show up in photographs.
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Suttogás
Halloweens fall night
a day when it rains everywhere,
Youse:
Mi letette a kutyát
a wailing for in lamentation for the dead –
kiddo
dearie
mate
Synoria; Au, stylo
chamber pipe
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I feel little lazy during the fall season. But I managed some time for my garden and same as you I am also feeling relaxed once I have done with the cleaning of of weeds and also planted some new flower. It was really nice post.
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