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I've needed to be out of town a lot in the last few weeks and the fall chores are not getting the priority they deserve right now. I've been forced to take a long, hard look at what needs to be done and make choices. Here's what I figured out:
Other fall chores can more easily be skipped if you have to. In fact, the ones I will consider skipping are the ones I most often put off until the last minute. I don't really have to bring in any geraniums this year. More will be available next year and it is worth more than the price of new ones to have the time I would have had to spend now and over the rest of the winter to have good quality ones in spring. Those old wives tales about wintering them in paper bags or hanging in the basement may mean keeping them alive, but they won't produce plants that I would want to have in my garden as an examples of my prowess. I would have success with the dahlia roots, but I grew only one that really pleased me this year and I believe I can let the others go. The voodoo lilies will perish too, but they don't really do as well for me as I would like. After gardening for all these years, I find that I am just now really appreciating that good gardening is also about letting go. There are chores that I won't do now because it really is too late in this climate. I've let the window for lawn seeding close on me. I know from experience that the myth of spreading the lawn seed after the ground is frozen so it will come up in the spring is just wishful thinking. What the birds don't eat and damp cold doesn't kill will move around with the melting snow and sprout into little clumps of new grass that will damp off because they are too crowded. I should have done it in early September, so now I won't have to do it. |
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