{"id":128,"date":"2008-12-29T04:53:46","date_gmt":"2008-12-29T12:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=128"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:33:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:33:00","slug":"a-successful-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/a-successful-year\/","title":{"rendered":"A Successful Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

A SUCCESSFUL YEAR
\n<\/font><\/font><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>The summer of 2007 was the year of the garden imperative, as I worked nearly every day to get my garden ready for a mid-summer wedding and a late summer garden tour.\u00a0 The summer of 2008 had no such imperative, but in some ways it was even better.\u00a0 Results took a back seat to process and process is what I and most other dedicated gardeners live for.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When the hellebores came up, very early last spring, my husband was unemployed.\u00a0 The prospects were few and the uncertainty level was high.\u00a0 I looked around at the little sprouts starting to push up all over the garden and wondered if we would be able to keep the house.\u00a0 Not everyone wants to tend a large and complex garden and I knew that there was a very good chance that whoever succeeded me on this property might reconvert much of it to lawn.\u00a0 In the daytime I thought about the loss of the garden; at night I worried about what might happen to us.\u00a0 The worries piled up even as the clumps of daffodils burst into bloom.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It turned out to be a banner year for the spring plants, and the hellebores, daffodils, hyacinths and columbines were as beautiful as I have ever seen them.\u00a0 Though a job offer still seemed far off, a series of promising leads came along for my husband.\u00a0 None of them panned out, but each one bolstered our spirits at times when we were feeling particularly miserable.\u00a0 I cut my plant purchases down to almost nothing and increased my garden writing to bring in some extra revenue.\u00a0 I made plans to divide some of my existing plants to fill holes in the borders.\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

In the meantime, the groundhog, who knew nothing of our problems, decided the perfect place for a large new hole was the raised bed by our garage.\u00a0 I channeled some of my frustrations in his direction by pouring two full trays of used cat litter down the hole.\u00a0 The groundhog took the hint and the hole remained unused for a couple of months.\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

I felt triumphant–until my garden arch, purchased last year, was blown over for about the tenth time by the gusty spring winds.\u00a0 The ground stakes holding it in place really weren’t long enough to stand up to New Jersey windstorms and I couldn’t find any longer ones that fit the holes in the “feet”\u009d at the bottom of the arch.\u00a0 I considered cementing it into the ground, but never quite found the time to read up on how to do it, buy the materials and get the job done.\u00a0 Fortunately, the New Dawn rose that grows on the arch seemed to take the repeated topplings as a sign of divine grace, and sprouted hundreds of pink blossoms.\u00a0 The flowers were at least partial compensation for the bloodletting that occurred on the many occasions when I impaled myself on large thorns while righting the fallen arch.\u00a0 Finally I dug the legs of the arch about a foot into the ground and firmed the soil around them with a vengeance.\u00a0 This seems to have worked, as the arch has stayed upright now through a number of storms.\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

The unemployment anxiety continued as the roses bloomed in May and increased as they rebloomed in early July.\u00a0 For awhile one of the few sources of pleasure was the relative absence of Japanese beetles.\u00a0 Usually July is one long orgy amid the petals as those infernal rose predators infest the premises.\u00a0 Last July though, they must have opted for cheap motel rooms or at least found better roses elsewhere.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

In early August the sun finally came out–metaphorically speaking–when my husband started a new job. \u00a0I took a leap of faith and ordered a few bulbs for the fall as the purple-stemmed elephant ears plant in the back yard reached a magnificent size.\u00a0 The August lilies or Hosta plantaginea sprouted so many fragrant, waxy white flowers that I filled an entire vase with them.\u00a0 Mowing the grass, a chore that I hate with a passion, became much less onerous once I stopped worrying about losing the house. \u00a0I had to pour another two trays of cat litter down the hole in the raised bed, as the groundhog finally pushed the old litter aside.\u00a0 Joining him in the backyard animal kingdom were raccoons the size of zeppelins, possums and the occasional skunk.\u00a0 My neighbor thought she saw a coyote, but the animal was obviously scared by the sight of the raccoons and moved on to less dangerous territory.<\/font><\/p>\n

This past year I harvested enough blueberries and blackberries to bake a very large berry crisp and I had enough basil for several batches of pesto.\u00a0 My experiment with growing lettuce on the back deck was only modestly successful, but I will try it again next year with larger containers. I saw sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens’ beautiful gardens at “Aspet”\u009d, his home in Cornish, New Hampshire, and I interviewed some extraordinary professional plantsmen as well as a number of wonderful amateur gardeners.\u00a0 I was so inspired that I enlarged my garden a bit more.\u00a0 I was still enlarging it when the first snowflakes fell.<\/font><\/p>\n

Now the Solstice has passed and even though we don’t perceive it yet, the light is coming back.\u00a0 The New Year is here, as are the garden catalogs.\u00a0 The state of the economy has made the whole world nervous, and perhaps that is why so many people are thinking of growing some of their own food next spring and summer.\u00a0 Nervous people often derive great benefit from the slow and steady process of gardening.\u00a0 Thank goodness that it is almost time for that process to begin again.
\n<\/strong><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A SUCCESSFUL YEAR \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The summer of 2007 was the year of the garden imperative, as I worked nearly every day to get my garden ready for a mid-summer wedding and a late summer garden tour.\u00a0 The summer of 2008 had no such imperative, but in some ways it was even better.\u00a0 Results took a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-winter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1656,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions\/1656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}