As of yesterday afternoon, the biggest part of my gardening year is over. Clean-up from the fall, spring weeding, mulching, flower baskets planted and veggies planted in the bales. Phew!
It took way longer this year than usual. Part of this was the weather. We had spectacular weekends but then I wasn’t following through because Monday – Friday was too cool. I do not like to garden when I’m cold and I certainly don’t want to wear a coat out there either! Then the mess from the fall was much bigger than usual. And all my fault. A triple whammy, in fact.
My gardening season came to an abrupt end the day after my birthday last August, when I blew out my first knee. Then right about the time I might have gotten to some fall clean up, the other knee went. That meant that apart from some watering (most of which YA took care of), I didn’t do ANY fall clean up. No dead-heading the late summer flowers, no cutting back peony stalks, no raking (although YA is a little bitty bit).
The second problem was last year’s mulch. For reasons that pass understanding, I chose big chunky wood chips last year. As we were spreading them about last spring, I was thinking I’d made a mistake, but it didn’t become clear how obnoxious these wood chips were until we were cleaning up this spring. They didn’t seem to have broken down at all and were a mess to work around/with.
Then there was the Creeping Charlie fail. Normally I do a great job of weeding the Creeping Charlie menace but last summer, I was busy in July, thinking I would just do a big push in August. But, then…. well, you know. My nemesis ground cover didn’t give a fig about my knees so there was way more weeding needed this year on that front before the mulch could go down.
I’m feeling quite relieved… there will, of course, be plenty of gardening going forward, but not the three/four hours a day grind we’ve been going through. Time to enjoy!
When was the last time you “shot yourself in the foot”?
Trail Baboon 
breaking my leg two years ago and getting bit by my daughters cat made my right side be the center of my rehab taking hours a week and making me appreciate my health prior to the issues.
i was always amazed at the way cuts healed up so quickly and completely. it just isnt so with everything. appreciate what you can appreciate and deal with the rest.
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Must be tim…
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word press has me outside with no hope of ever returning i think about sgnng n lke clyde does bt only after hitting send
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tim, I knew about the broken leg that has been so difficult, but not the cat bite. A Master GArdener friend of mine was bitten by her cat and landed in the hospital with sepsis. I have heard of this several times over the years. Is that what happened to you as well?
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i didnt know cat bites were a thing so on a trip to chicago to hang with my daughters a month after the bite i noticed my hand had swollen to huge
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I wanted an antibiotic, but the doctor made me go into urgent care in Chicago or they did give me antibiotic as soon as I had finished the 10 days the swelling started again so from back here in Minneapolis, I went in and they gave me a stronger antibiotic, but before I got through day three of the dosing, the swelling was coming back so they plugged me into IV antibiotics and the next day it was obviously still a problem so somebody in the emergency room figured out that I Needed to look at the fact that the cat bit me in the tendon and I must be infected inside the sleeve of the tendon so they had to cut open my hand dig all the junk out of the sleeve in the tendon and I have been 2 1/2 years now trying to work at getting the stiffness and swelling out of it in order to be able to continue playing my music weekly trips for a long time to physical therapy now I go every three weeks and switched to a specialist in Rochester who herself is a concert violinist and understands what you need to do to keep all those individual motions working in your hands. I have come a long way and I am probably gonna have to learn to accept. 60% function from here on out.
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Cat bites and scratches take a long time to heal and they often become infected. Sounds like you had a rough time!
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
VS, I cannot believe you are able to weed out creeping charlie! In my yard that is a Sisyphian task. I don’t like to use herbicides either, so that means I just mow it off along with the dandelions which will disappear soon anyway. The truth is that when it comes to turf, I just do not care. My flower gardens have taken up more and more space over the years. I have shot myself in the foot by never weeding the bird feeder garden which is now so infested with weeds that they choke out the flowers I want there. Plus the seeds in the bird feeder turn themselves into weeds in a magical process.
OT: For Christmas our DIL got us a solar powered prism that I place in the window of the porch. The solar power makes it spin. It is east-facing. So this sunny morning the prism is spinning out rainbows as I sit here. They show up on the walls and are so enjoyable to watch. It is making it difficult to get up and go about my day.
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The space between the sidewalk and the curb in front of my house (a space that is variously named in different locales) is “mine to do with as I will” (the space between the sidewalk and the house is my spouse’s to do with as she will). There’s a rain garden out there, which originally was surrounded by turf. A few years I removed that. Now, it is where I spread the sunflower seeds and empty shells that fall from the bird feeders. During the summer and into the fall, it’s a field of yellow. This year I’m adding some red, some Mexican and some Mammoth sunflowers to the area. It should be a multicolored delight!
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Those Mexican Sunflowers will attract any number of butterflies and pollinators. I enjoy those so much.
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Sisyphian is the PERFECT word!!
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This is our first spring in this house, and our gardening will mainly consist of cleaning up perennial beds that haven’t been attended to for quite a few years and planning what will be dug up in the fall and replaced next spring. We have lots of small spirea bushes that will be dug up. I love Morden roses, hardy roses developed in Morden, Manitoba that need very little care and are beautiful. They will go in next year. Annabelle hydrangeas will also be planted. The home school student who answered our help wanted add is coming over tomorrow to help us fill the raised veggie beds with soil. BF and I will head to a nursery in Alvord, IA next week to check out their stock of tomatoes and eggplants.
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We have one of those (we call them) boulevard gardens David talks about, gradually replaced the grass with perennials, the first few years we were here. It is now so much more work than the lawn would be, I’ve wondered the past couple of years “WHAT was I thinking”
That said, it is lovely when parts of it are in bloom, but the goldenrod is crowding out my peony, the coreopsis is taking over…
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I gave away a nice acoustic guitar a couple of years ago, as it hurt my hand to do the bar chords, so I thought I wouldn’t use it as much as this other person. I now wish I’d kept it, for working out chords to songs we sing at the Monday rallies…
And unfortunately, I can’t find on youtube the “What Was I Thinking?” single by Priscilla Herdman…
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Christine Lavin sang that.
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Oh, yes! Glad you remembered, Jacque…
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Christine Lavin also wrote it.
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Funny, given today’s topic, I came across this quote in the book I’m reading. It’s attributed to Benny Hill (I never expected I would ever quote anything attributed to Benny Hill).
They said it was an impossible task
Some even said they knew it,But I…
I tried the impossible task,
And I couldn’t bloody do it.
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It’s hard for me to narrow down the last time I shot myself in the foot. It’s pretty much a daily occurrence for me!
Mondays have become the busiest day of the week for me. I take Maggie in to doggy daycare at 9, then run some errands, then go to my morning knitting group. After that, I usually make a quick dash to the co-op before picking Maggie up at 1. Then I try to get things done at home. I have Fiber Friends group at 6-8 pm. Yesterday I wore myself out. Like VS, I did all my planting. I have been so excited about having more space right outside my door to do a little gardening that I went a little wild. I have many more tomatoes than I need, more basil than I need, two rows of carrots, two rows of Swiss chard, some herbs, and lots of flowers.
I was dysfunctionally tired after planting, really worn out. I tried to go to Fiber Friends, but ended up leaving early due to messing up my knitting terribly because I was so tired. So I came home and went to bed early. At least I got a good night’s sleep! And today I have a two cedar planters full of veggies, herbs, and flowers!
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Shot myself in the foot last week.
In disassembling and reassembling my “colored bottle sculpture” in the back yard 2 weeks ago I left some pieces with sharp screws in them lying in the grass. Last week, using a borrowed wheelbarrow to move some stuff, I punctured the tire. After going through multiple attempts to fix it, short of taking it to a tire shop, I watched a YouTube video, then drilled a hole in the tire and filled it with insulating foam, which dries into rigidity. It didn’t fix things. So, I bought a new wheel at Harbor Freight, except it wouldn’t accept the axle from the old wheel. My friend, Arlen, suggested buying a long bolt with a nut on the end. I did that, but had to buy 2 bolts, because that’s how many were in the package, and 12 nuts (same reason). THAT worked. Now I won’t have to replace an entire wheelbarrow, but I’ve spent enough money to buy a new one, all to rescue an old one… because I didn’t pick up trash after the initial job. Worse, the job for which I used the wheelbarrow didn’t even require one to start with. Larry, a neighbor over by the tools, has access to a pile of discarded 2X4 lumber. He has offered to get me some, if I have need. I’ve asked for 10, to build a “bottle thing” at the neighborhood center like I have at home. Once the sunflowers are planted that will be my next beautification project. If I should use the wheelbarrow, I’ll be more careful about that tire.
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Putting up my art is close to shooting myself in the foot. But I have built up energy as I go, not sure why. Today I finished putting up art. Have some family photos left to do, but they are small. I have seven framed pieces of art left over. Dispersing that among family and friends.
The two biggish trees outside my big living room window are clearly ash and are clearly dying. They give birds delight, which gives me delight.
Clyde
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love your art. glad youre looking after it
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I guess I need to get after MY garden. It’s finally warm enough (I think).
My yard is being invaded by some really persistent vining thing coming up all over along the side where I once had a neighbor who grew wonderful tomatoes and blueberries (pause to remember and mourn the loss of neighbor and his wonderful garden).
I have no idea what this thing is, but when I put a picture of it into one of those online plant ID things, it identified it as a “squash”, possibly a cucumber. If only.
It’s related for sure, but produces nothing useful and its “fruits” are nasty spiny things with stickers that are somehow toxic, as my hand blew up and I felt terrible for days. So I am trying to keep it at bay this year. It is positively insidious, so even if I wanted to try and get rid of it with herbacide, I’m afraid it would leave me with a scorched earth backyard.
I’m going to try and stick to a couple of tomatoes and some salad greens (besides the grapes, currants and raspberries that are established)- maybe some peppers and summer squash. We’ll see.
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good luck
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The pesky vine you describe sounds like wild cucumber. You have my sympathy, it’s an aggressive, unpleasant weed to combat. If at all possible, don’t let it go to seed, and don’t put it in your compost pile.
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Thanks, PJ. That tracks and is why I yank at it whenever I see it. Horrid stuff.
I do wonder where it came from all of a sudden. Never seen or heard of it before.
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