Gardening... yes, I realize it's 20 degrees outside.

[mellymell]

Which is precisely why I'm thinking about gardening. I can bundle up in some fleece indoors and dream of spring, with my online seed catalogs and my spreadsheets and junk. Normally, I'd just sit down with my notebook and my paper seed catalogs and some graph paper and come up with something I wouldn't follow through on. We'll see if technology

Comments

[mellymell]

Yes, baby steps! That's one of the biggest lessons I've learned. I've wasted a lot of time and money and resources on trying to do too much at once. Our last house was in dense forest so I couldn't really garden except for a few shade loving annuals in pots on the deck. So I kind of went nuts when we moved into this house with lots of full sun areas and absolutely no landscaping, save for an awkward rectangle of impatiens in front that I feel certain was only planted on the insistence of their realtor. It was a blank canvas and I was excited.

Edible gardens are a lot of work. I grew up with a vegetable garden that easily covered a tenth of an acre. My mom was out there every single day from March to October weeding and watering and treating for pests and fertilizing and harvesting. And then there was the tilling in the spring. I tried to do that one year as a teenager when I was determined to get the garden going again and... yeah. Nope!

I do square foot gardening now because we're on a small suburban plot and the raised beds we've built make things like weeding and watering a lot easier and completely eliminate the need to till the soil every year because we're not walking on it and compacting it. I can just turn it under with a pitchfork. But there's still the daily watering and harvesting that often falls by the wayside and since I try to go organic, it's tough to keep up with pests, though fertilizing is a breeze as I only have to do a soil dressing about once a month.

I've not planted any daffodils yet, but I love having spring bulbs that pop up as soon as it starts to get a little warm. I've seen the tips of my irises coming up lately and that makes me happy. Always inspires me to get out and get things cleaned up from winter and start planning for spring and summer.