Report From An Opinionated Gardener – October 17
I don’t know about the rest of you who plant in cold climates, but I’m happy that I can’t garden twelve months a year. Yes, I’m sorry to see the vegetables and annuals go, and I will miss the flowers. But it’s pleasing to be able to focus on things other than weeding, planting and watering.
This weekend I did my last planting for 2010. I finally got the Hellebores that were sent to me by Skagit Gardens, the Delphiniums grown by my friend Slim and the last-minute-must-have order from Fairweather Gardens in the ground. For a gardener, these last plantings are a type of harvest…an ingathering of the season’s final contributions to the landscape.
It’s not that we stop our sowing or cultivation…most of us just focus on other crops. My mind is already on a novel that’s been in the works for a few years and a couple of gardening books that I’d dearly like to place in the arms of a publisher. Time, too, for focusing more on friends and family, and to return to the stack of books that wait on my nightstand.
Yes, I appreciate the winter season and the pause in landscaping that the dormant garden offers, but I am far from idol. Planting continues all of our lives, and we’re well served to realize that our continual cultivation just changes focus or location once in awhile.
This grouping of plants are no longer on the patio, but are placed in the ground. Yea! I'm so pleased to be finished with putting the selections for 2010 in the garden...on to the plantings of winter, and to researching what will come to Poison Ivy Acres in 2011.
