Sometimes I truly marvel at the seemingly infinite well of optimism that gardeners draw from.
I myself was ready to throw in the trowel last fall. My garden was not thriving. It was only surviving. And I wasn't sure why. I'm still not sure.
I contemplated just letting the whole thing sit this one out. Cover it with mulch and save on water. Do something else with my time. Take up a new hobby. Learn how to grow mushrooms in my shed. Take up violin lessons. Anything but to work hard and be disappointed in that garden.
But at some point deep into winter, a spark of an idea flickered to life. What if I didn't plant vegetables? What if I planted flowers? What if I planted a custom made delivery system for my eco-dying obsession?
Well, that's all it took. I was back in the raised bed. But I realized in order to re-purpose my garden space, it needed to be rearranged. And I wanted a fresh start with different priorities. This would require a LOT of work. But this work is just close enough in its nature to moving furniture ..... something that I dearly love to do.... that I was suddenly filled with energy.
The little pond area is part of that, and the grassy plot is another.
Over the past several days, I have made progress on things. Though as I say, these pictures aren't very inspiring at the moment, they will be a record of how things are going....
In the foreground on the left, I planted gladiolus bulbs. And I transplanted many volunteer violas along the right side of the newly demarked bed . There are still many coming up and I'll move them before preparing the soil for the grass seed. My little shade shelter is coming along. I keep adding thises and thats to it. What I really need is a comfortable bench or a better chair. I'm on the lookout.
Here it is from the other direction:
I'm trying really hard to just imagine this covered in grass, without adding any flowers to it at all to keep it simple to mow. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to stick to that. There may be volunteers that emerge and I have the dickens of a time not letting those grow as they are usually very hardy and vigorous. We'll see.
Anyway, the progress is slow but steady and it's my plan to be out there again today doing some more rearranging. I'm trying not to be too hard a taskmaster because it IS still early in the season and I have time to do things at a reasonable pace. Which fits in pretty well with my physical abilities these days. I'm not decrepit. But I'm not exactly setting the world on fire either.
At least I'm still in the gardening game.
