Pardon me while I open the Department of Shameless Promotion. Did you know that Grocery Gardening is on not one…not two…but THREE Amazon best seller lists? The reviews (not all of them from my friends) have also been positive. (My mother is so proud!)
Leave me a comment to this post on or before Friday, March 5, and you’ll be entered into the drawing. When you leave your comment, please answer one of these questions:
- How, if at all, do you read other comments on blog posts? Do you read them before responding? Never read them? Something else?
- After commenting, do you subscribe to the follow-up comments on that post?
- Do you return to a blog post after commenting to see what other people have had to say?
Your responses will be most helpful in helping me to deal with the comments all the very kind people leave here at Bumblebee. I always read every comment and love them. I go through phases when I respond. Then I think “No one is looking at my responses” so I stop. But then I feel guilty and start responding again. So, help me out, okay? It’ll give me more time for grocery gardening!
It is a season of changes. Not only is the weather cooling, life is changing here.
Benjamin, my only child (my baby!), has gone off to college at The Citadel. He is the third generation on his dad’s side to attend college there. When he graduates, he will wear “The Ring” with his dad, uncles, great uncles and cousins. He knew what to expect going there. He is well-prepared for the challenge. And he seems to thrive on the manly camaraderie of the place.
That still didn’t stop me from crying for pretty much the first week while he was gone. The tears were drawn from a combination of missing him, worrying about him and being disoriented by the new direction of my life as an empty-nester.
Sweet autumn clematis blooms over the garden gate in September
I have stopped crying now, but am still trying to navigate a life with a 50% reduction in the number of men I need to take care of on a daily basis.
In other changes, Harry has left private practice and gone back to work for the government. The book I was co-writing this summer, Grocery Gardening, is finally off my desk. The six new baby chicks will be laying in about another month–leaving us with 10 – 12 eggs a day to dispose of. And I have major new work and writing assignments to keep me busy.
Oh, the garden?
Garlic chives and pineapple sage duke it out in the herb bed
I can’t say this has been my most productive or meticulous garden year. There were so many distractions and challenges that kept me out of the garden. Still, Mother Nature was forgiving for just this year. The work from past years has paid off, as perennials continued to bloom, flowers to re-seed and the overall bones of the raised beds, fences and arbor to hold it all together. I don’t think I can continue this type of neglect next year and still hold my head up as a gardener though.
The hakuro nashiki willow standard needs a haircut--but then it ALWAYS seems to need a haircut. The tuteur is covered with malabar spinach and scarlet runner beans.
Now, as weather cools and all these darned changes slow down just long enough for me to catch my breath, I am enjoying being out in the garden, putting in fall vegetables and tidying up for the winter to come.
I just broadcast a mix of lettuce seeds for this pretty little bed. What a treat to pick our salads each night.
I’m actually looking forward to winter now. I have a fancy new cold frame to put together this weekend. I’m setting up the light garden in the basement to grow microgreens. Cooking projects, sewing projects, writing projects and, of course, visits to The Citadel and Ben’s visits home are going to keep me busy.
That's amaranthe leaning against the tuteur where the henryi clematis grows.
Overall, I’m still living the good life. It’s a life of transitions, but it’s a good life.
(You can click on an image for a larger version of the photo.)
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.
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.
What’s on your plate today? The weather here is sunny and at least not frigid. I’ll continue my early spring garden cleanup and also clean and repair bird houses. The bluebirds have made their return and are already checking out the real estate. What a joy to watch over my Sunday morning coffee.
I find this one of the most anxiety-producing times of the year in the garden.
As I head outside and begin the winter cleanup, the whole summer garden thing just seems incredibly overwhelming. There’s so much to do. And I’m just one person out there. Honestly, I felt like sitting down to have a good cry about mid-afternoon. But I managed to put one foot in front of the other and actually got a good amount of tidy-up work done. Tomorrow will be more of the same.
Thank you everyone who left a comment explaining how you approach reading and leaving comments on blog posts. The cumulative input has been extremely helpful. The overall consensus is that you’ll read comments if it’s an interesting discussion. You don’t usually subscribe to comments because it clogs up your email box. And you’ll only check back to see if the author has responded if you’ve left a question. That about sums it up.
On another note, I have selected by random number generator the winner of Grocery Gardening. She’s been notified. When she responds back, I’ll announce who she is.
I went outside to re-fill the bird feeders—AGAIN. The parts of my lawn that don’t look like the frozen tundra resemble a swamp. With every step I take my foot sinks down at least an inch. Walking to the feeders I can see my path in the mud.
I also see that we lost one small ornamental tree by the driveway as well as one of my rose trellises, which succumbed to the weight of the snow.
Spring better hurry up and get here. I have a lot of work to do.
Are you sick of everyone talking about the weather? I am too, but here goes…
There is so much snow on the ground, I don’t know when it’ll all melt. On top of that, much of it has iced to the extent that moving it from one place to another requires a pick ax. Walking in the back yard to fill the bird feeders is like walking on a bumpy ice rink. There are trees and bushes that need a bit of first aid to remove partially broken branches, but I don’t dare risk skating across the ice with my pruners. Not yet anyway.
Still, there is hope. Although we’re expecting snow flurries today, the weather should warm up into the forties in the next few days, providing some melting relief.
But really, all this unrelieved WHITE is getting to me!
