Sad Garden

I like to spend time futzing around in the garden. Weeding, planting things, helping things grow. All kinds of things: veggies, flowers, herbs, trees, whatever. It's not so much that I like to eat (but I do!) but that I like to grow things. I like the feeling of accomplishment I get when gaze out over our nicely-kept garden.

This season is pretty weird for me. As much as I want to have a beautiful garden with lots of vegs, flowers & herbs tucked here and there, it just isn't happening. And that makes me sad. I just don't have the energy for it, although I have plenty of will. But will's just not enough to get the job done.

I went out for an hour this morning, pulled a half-wheelbarrow full of weeds from the main garden and weeded the new asparagus shoots. I deadheaded the roses. I planted a flat of seedlings that needed to be in the ground nearly a month ago. I watered the asparagus and newly-planted area by hand, after running the soaker hose in the raspberry bed for two hours. And then I came back in the house and went back to bed.

This is what the garden looks like now:

Sad berries

Sad berries

The blueberries are pretty unhappy, because they're weeded in and have a lot of competition. (They don't like competition for water and nutrients.) The jays think it's great - lots of places to hide while they look for ripe berries. Bah!

The garden is equally as sad, I'm afraid. The stakes in the foreground are for dahlias that are poking through the mulch. The Bundle Of Weedy Stuff on the left is actually our venerable Russian Kale that has seed maturing - it's covered with hundreds of seed pods, some of which I hope to harvest and save. (I could probably share a hundred and not miss them, too.)

What you really don't see here is that the majority of the 'big' garden is full of weeds - false dandelion, little bittercress, you name it. It's a real mess. This time last year it was full of tomato, pepper and cucumber plants vying for space. This makes me sad.

I went out to take these pictures, though, and found something wonderful. My laziness is nurturing some of my favorite creatures. Nearly a dozen swallowtail butterflies are drinking water that remained after I watered in the new plants earlier this morning.

Swallowtail butterflies







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Originally published 6/8/2015 

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