Gardening Life Archives - Page 12 of 15

Bzzzz July 12th, 2009

I’m going to call my next book Why Bad Things Happen to Good Gardeners.***

The first chapter will be entitled “Sh*t Happens and Mother Nature is on Vacation.” It will be an indignant rant about how disease, pestilence, drought, flood and other natural disasters inevitably happen to every gardener sooner or later.

I will use my own experiences as examples. I will discuss how my tomatoes have fursarium wilt—for the second year in a row, despite rotating them to an entirely new location where tomatoes have never gone before. I will describe how a legion of leaf-footed bugs decimated my tomatillos and sweet autumn clematis last year and how I haven’t seen a single one this year. I will show photos of my monarda blooming with powdery mildew.

And let’s not forget the roses, otherwise known as black spot on a stick.

july-view-toward-house2-rw

The title of the second chapter is currently up in the air, but I’m considering something such as “Plants Have Loved and Lost” or “Emergency Rooms I Have Seen, Courtesy of My Fiskars Pruners.”

*big sigh*

As I was watering for hours and hours today (see chapter on drought), I was wondering to myself, “What would I do if I didn’t garden?’

Being fairly obsessed with productivity and in love with checks in little boxes on a to-do list, I would probably do something useful. But what?

I’m not considering giving up gardening. This is more like an intellectual exercise I do when I get frustrated. What would you do?

***Why do I say “next book?” Because, yes, I am writing a book. To be precise, I’m co-authoring a book currently called Grocery Gardening. You’ll be hearing more about it in coming months, but you can reserve your copy now by ordering here.

Posted In: Gardening, Gardening Life

Tags: Grocery Gardening, Pests

9 Comments

Bzzzz May 25th, 2009

My son, Benjamin, really knows how to get my blood boiling.

The other day we were sitting out on the back deck enjoying the warm sun and fresh air when he turned to me and said, “You know, your garden doesn’t look very good this year. Before there were lots more flowers and vegetables.”

To which I replied…

“What?!?!?! It’s only May! Not even Martha Stewart can make tomatoes produce in May.”

Wisteria blooms over the garden gate. By summer’s end, the sweet autumn clematis will have reached up from the other side.

Still, he did have a point. I have been a bit slow to get things rolling here this spring. My attentions have been torn between work, house, cooking, animal husbandry, writing and a great deal of time exercising on the spinning bike, classes and my home yoga practice.

Thankfully, many flowers, herbs and fruits return on their own. I’ve added bedding plants from the nursery. But I still have a stock tank pond and some more vegetables and flowers to attend to.

The herb garden includes flowers–columbine for spring color and celosia once June arrives and to the end of the growing season.

Most of that will have to wait until after the Garden Bloggers Spring Fling that comes up next weekend in Chicago. I will work in new bed digging and some woods clearing between other business trips I have planned this summer.

Jubilee strawberries produce all summer long. A single bed is enough to keep us in strawberry shortcake and to eat for breakfast with Greek yogurt.

I am also making time to just sit still and appreciate what I’ve been given. I hope with all the busy-ness of gardening, you also have a beautiful place to sit and enjoy what you’ve created.

Wisteria also grows along the fence at the back of the garden. If you look closely, you can see a couple of asparagus stalks that have persisted even after tearing out the asparagus bed.

Posted In: Gardening, Gardening Life

Tags: spring, Spring Fling, wisteria

13 Comments

Why Bad Things Happen to Good Gardeners

Spring has Sprung at Bumblebee