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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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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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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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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