Late Spring Exhaustion
From late winter I do a daily walk-through of the WILD garden and pull out a dandelion here, a vigorous volunteer there and generally note what’s happening. Sometimes my daily garden walk is a few meditative minutes. Other times I’ll spend an hour or so propagating a favorite shrub or picking out thuggish volunteer seedlings. The daily walk helps me to keep tabs on what’s happening in the garden.
The springtime work I love the most is making sure the beds maintain their designed look with plants that complement each other in shape, height and color.
Per Pat Sutton’s wonderful blog, each Memorial Day weekend, I give the Joe Pye Weed, Culver’s Root, and Asters “haircuts” to so they’re not 7’ tall, leggy and all flopping over in August.
Struggling Virginia roses by the front mailbox are reunited with the thriving thicket of native roses in the backyard. Meanwhile, I’ve replanted the mailbox garden with shrubby St John’s Wort, a gift from Becky.
I can’t bear to just throw out my favorite volunteers. I’ve expanded the east-side-garden and sidewalk-hellstrip for FREE with transplanted Northern Bayberry, Wild Senna and Virginia Chokeberry.
I take cast-offs from the neighbors. Throwing out that lavender bush? I’ll take it! You’re thinning out your Hosta? Yes, it’s my favorite “living mulch.” To another neighbor I ask: “Do you want some Ohio Spiderwort? ….I’ll even plant it for you in your garden.”
It’s all like sculpting with nature. But I have to work fast knowing there are only a few more weeks or days before the summer’s heat wilt the transplants and me.
By late spring I get a bit obsessive and gardening often takes up most of my days.
I don’t make time to look for freelance work, or call family. I wake up in the morning and my hands automatically go to support my lower back… like I’m decades older. I think: “Today I’ll just go out there for a few minutes….” Then hours pass and the heat of the day, thirst or hunger brings me inside. My only other exercise is yoga to get the aches out.
I still kick myself for not mulching more of the sidewalk to fulfill my dream of entirely replacing the crabgrass-choked hell-strip with wildflowers. Now I wonder: what was I thinking expanding the garden into the sidewalk hell-strip at all?
Kim says her husband encourages her to appreciate their garden and focus on its beauty not on WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE. Each morning she starts her day with a 5-minute gratitude walk through her garden.
I tried a gratitude walk …and I just start gardening.