 |
Garden journal entry |
 |
A four o'clock and a century plant |
December 31, 2024. Another year of gardening come and gone. A hopeful beginning, a disappointing middle, and a hopeful ending...
Well, all years have a hopeful beginning – because the beginning is the starting of seeds, and the emergence of many flowers from their slumber, and then the planting of those seedlings. All of which takes me at least through April, and into May. In spring, it's not hard to find time to do some gardening, since the garden is enticing in those warm but not yet sweltering days, and tackling weed infestations is a pleasantly meditative activity that time of year. Then June comes, and that's often the turning point around here: hot and wet, or hot and dry? This year, we got some reprieve from the summer-long droughts of last year, with rain persisting into early summer, boosted by a visit from hurricane Beryl in July; but then, seemingly inevitably, the showers and storms stopped, and we were back to the hot dry pattern that had marked the summers of 2022 and 2023. Meanwhile, I found out that my favorite local nursery, an oddball one-of-a-kind affair somewhat out of the way, had ceased to exist in its previous quirky form, depriving me of a source of interesting new plants to try. So I once again found myself rather uninspired about the garden through the dog days, which once again led to the demise of nearly all those so hopefully started seedlings when my nursery beds found themselves neglected in the watering department. But somehow, around the middle of the year, I realized that to start enjoying the garden again, I had to get out there and put some more effort in, even through the hot days of late summer: and so I started working towards making the garden a nicer place to be and enjoy, for me and my family, and I'm glad to say I've kept it up in the last few months of the year. Believe me, it was necessary! 2024 was a year of editing trees: I already wrote about the downing of the jujube in the aftermath of Beryl. I also decided that it was time for the Hercules' club to go, since it didn't hold up its part of the ornamental bargain in the garden. And a couple of quite enthusiastic tree volunteers (an American sycamore and a rough-leaf dogwood) had outlasted their welcome. All of which meant that my chipper did overtime this year, producing lots of organic top-dressing for the garden beds as well as food for the compost pile. A few trips to local nurseries (not quite so eccentric as the one we lost, but still good for an occasional haul of plants) produced a crop of green things needing new homes, partly to fill in the holes left by activities above. And there you have it, the garden held my interest, and a few months of chipping away at the problems I'd allowed to fester for a while (such as a painful proliferation of brambles through many of the garden borders) has resulted in a much more manageable slab of sururbia going into the new year of gardening. I'm already well into the annual ritual of starting seeds (the patio table is filling up with greenlings). And the lack of freezing weather so far means that the garden is still surprisingly full of flowers: the tropical waterlilies are still going strong in the pond, the iochroma, thryallis and duranta are duking it out in purple, yellow, and blue in the back border, as well as blue butterfly and Turk's cap in the side border. And that's just the main players. Many others continue to charm, often on a small late-season scale, such as the single flower on the four o'clock in the picture here, or a final few flowers on the Speedy Gonzalez rose. Of course, the first flowers of the new season aren't far away (I already see the summer snowflakes pushing up) – so here's to an all new round of gardening in 2025! May the freezes be mild, the rains plentiful, the hot months merciful, and the inspiration to garden never too far away. |
Last modified:
September 09, 2009
Contact me
|