Gardening - Make it Easy on Yourself
Sometimes when you look at all the work that the garden needs, it's enough to make you decide to take up needlepoint instead. At least that will wait until you have the time and inclination to attack it. The garden won't. It sits there like a voracious monster, crying "Feed me!" like Audrey in 'The Little Shop of Horrors' - and if you do that it starts in again almost immediately with "Weed me!" Not to mention watering, cultivating, deadheading, dividing, planting, rearranging and tidying up.
Yup! Sometimes that needle and canvas look pretty tempting.. Nice lush flowers, made from wool, asking nothing more than that you admire them. Sit in them and they won't protest - or even crush.
But they lack a certain something that a real garden gives us. And so we toil on.
The truth of it all
It doesn't always feel like work. Today I was planting things - and other than the occasional frustration when I started a hole in the perfect place for the new copper leafed hibiscus - only to find barely sprouted bulbs lying below the surface - planting is one of those things I love to do. Having decided on a spot for the newcomer, it seems only a moment's work to prepare the spot, remove anything that looks like an incipient weed, and generally leave the area better than I found it. Planting is so full of hope that it can never be anything but pleasant.
But then came the watering - I don't think we've had any rain for the past several weeks. Spring is usually the time when you stop by here to hear me moaning about how I need to get out to the garden for my own sanity - but that it's been raining for the past four lifetimes! (That's how it seems when you're itching to get gardening and can't.) But those rainy springs are worth it - the plants absolutely lap it up and grow lush and beautiful.
TROUBLE SPOTS
Tool Solutions - Digging
This spring, planting is a lot like digging through dust. You can't make a decent planting hole because the dirt slides right back into it before you can take hold of the plant and slot it in. If I weren't planting in the woodland area, which doesn't yet have hose service, I'd use an intriguing tool that I brought back from the Garden Writer's Symposium called a "Holey Moley." You attach it to the hose and it does the digging using water pressure. Not only that but your plant goes into a nice moist hole, giving it the best possible start in life. But, as I said, I don't have a hose anywhere near where I'm planting so it's just me and my trowel.
Latest Articles