Tuesday, January 27, 2015

That Space Surrounding the Habitat

Has it been a month since the longest day? I noticed last week the shadows began to fall differently during the day. It's been a hot, dry summer and even though the hottest temperatures can occur at the end of January or in February, I think it's safe to say autumn is hiding in plain sight. The cicadas are certainly boisterous.

This time of year I feel sad everybody else's veg patch are beautiful and bountiful, gardens filled with flowers, and regret not having worked harder. Not this year; I have a small patch, but more importantly, I worked hard in 2014, (albeit with big breaks,) and clocked 116.5 hours weeding and digging and planting. That's a whole lot for a bona vide indoors person. And though the viney weeds look worse than ever, (I've never seen anything like this; I swear weeding, digging and, heaven forbid, putting in compost encourage them rather than deter,) I started to look forward to the coming autumn/winter.
In spite of clovers coming back with gusto, tomatoes big and small are ripening, I'm going to have enough garlic to braid for the first time, and I still might get dwarf beans or peppers. 

We moved into our house 18 years and a few days ago. And since it doesn't look like I'll be moving to an old city with stone buildings, a university with a robust lecture program, or galleries with robust exhibition schedule, I might as well love living where I am. And I know many Kiwis take to gardening as a creative process rather than part of grunt work.

I weeded and pruned for 40 minutes today. I'm trying to change my perspective.

3 comments:

  1. Mind you, my real effort won't start until March 1 at the earliest. Still hot days until then. Rain was forecast this morning but forecasts kept renegging, all the while Ben said it won't rain. It's clear, bright, and hotter at 9AM than it usually is. Crikey.

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  2. I'm very impressed with the number of hours you've put in Meg! With good results. We are having days and days of rain and the weeds are going gang busters. I'm away from home for a few days and I know the grass will be knee high when I get back. You deserve a nice little Good Gardener medal, I think.

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  3. A couple of the parts of our place is so bad I'm seriously thinking of taking pictures because we've broken some records, I'm sure.

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