gardening 101.

i have failed gardening 101 oh for about 8 years now...this is the first year we've lived here that i have a slight bit of a grip on the whole thing and actually might make it through to the first frost without running from the car to the house in hopes of never laying eyes on the dying mess...

i inherited a LOT of garden when we moved here...and in my extreme naivete, i thought it was a bonus...

yeah.

anyhow, the last two months we have been chipping away at rampant weeds and dead plants...moving things around, spreading dirt...we built the boybarians some raised beds and they were very ambitious the first year out...we'll see how that goes...

i've created a very pretty border bed and it's nearly finished all the way around...i've got the front garden cleared and ready for planting...next it's the lavender patch...MAJOR weeding, replacing a couple of plants that bit it in the big storm, and re-doing the path down the middle...

now is a pretty time outdoors...not too hot, things still look green and inspiring...

i have nearly *no idea* what i am doing in the garden, but i am doing something...it's a start...

gardening is part brains and part brawn...and a whole lot of hope and heart...

the thing is the brawn is killing me!...clearing the weeds and hauling the detritus to the weed heap and then shoveling and hauling and spreading of the dirt is hashing my legs!

not to mention i've been slightly worried about my neck and what all of this is doing to it...and amazingly enough my neck is just fine...not a problem...and i tell you, in the past i would have already been out of commission by now...

yea physical therapy!...did i just say that?...don't tell anyone...

so my neck is good...for the first time in a LONG time...but me legs, oy!...

the main thing about gardening for me is just the patience...and the constant vigilance for a time...and then patience once again...

i don't mind admitting i suck at all of that...sure the attacking and ripping out of years worth of weeds choking the soil and other plants i can do...there's something metaphoric about that process that is better than the best therapy in the world...it's the weeds that come after...and need to be dealt with on a constant, but less intense basis...it's having the were with all to figure out what may be wrong with a plant that isn't doing too well...and to care enough to do something about it...

sure, going to the nursery and eying all the beautiful plants beckoning you over (pick me! pick me!, they cry) is sooooo easy...and the potential, the idea is enough to fill your trunk and empty your wallet and just pushes it over the edge and seals the fate...a new plant, so sweet, full with life...we tease it from the pot and put it into the soil...we water it...we wait...how easy, we think...and then we think about what the plant might be at full bloom...

sometimes forgetting what the plant is now, what it will be in the meantime...

but that's where so many of us go wrong...the idea gets us and it's everything that comes after that gets obscured...the actual work...the process of growth that requires our attention...our care...

gardening is a good idea and a whole lot of work...there's so much more that comes after the fun of planning and picking...it's the idea that if you plant a seed you will see it through...through weather and pest invasion and the inevitable periods of neglect...both for the reward of what the plant produces as well as for the experience of doing it...but mostly because you took this plant and put it in your soil and now you must care for it...anything less just wouldn't be right...

it's easy to *not* garden...really really easy...except for the crippling guilt and shame when you're ignoring the dying yard for roughly half the year, it can be done quite successfully...in fact, until this year, we used to call our property the garden of benign neglect...

benign or not, it's still neglect...and neglect even in the best of conditions is no good...so, slowly but surely we're turning it around...and like anything worth doing there's a good formula for that...chipping away at the jobs we can do, considering help for the jobs we can't...and learning as we go...

my garden will not be perfect, it will not be the best garden anyone has ever seen, it will not win awards...which is just fine by me.

my goal is that in the first days of august, when the summer is in full bloom and the air is thick with heat and the grass is dead and the ground is baked hard, i won't have to run from the car to the house in hopes of not laying eyes on a dead and dying mess...my goal is to drive up and be greeted with life and growth and beauty...to walk leisurely to the house enjoying the trip...to sit under the little cherry tree by the garden, in the shady cool, and enjoy the fruits of my labor...

full well resting in the knowledge that did the best job i could...not because i threw my hands up and let fate and the inevitable take hold and say i did the best job i could do, taking my seat in the shade early on...but because i got down on my hands and knees and did what needed to be done...

x.