{"id":3325,"date":"2021-02-22T06:57:45","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T14:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=3325"},"modified":"2021-02-22T06:57:45","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T14:57:45","slug":"guilt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/guilt\/","title":{"rendered":"Guilt"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Guilt<\/a>
Guilt and deer damage should not go hand in hand<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are two kinds of guilt\u2014guilt for things done and guilt for things left undone.\u00a0 Most people suffer from one or the other, or both, from time to time.\u00a0 Some of us, especially those who have either had mothers and\/or been mothers, are masters at the art of guilt, whether we lay it on ourselves or impose it on others.\u00a0 Some of us multi-task and do both.<\/p>\n

With all that guilt flying around, it is important to find spaces where guilt should be strictly forbidden.\u00a0 One of those spaces is the garden.<\/p>\n

I have committed many garden sins over the years, planting vulnerable young specimens in the wrong places, over-watering, under-fertilizing, and committing small and large acts of semi-deliberate neglect, not to mention forgetting to apply deer spray at times when I knew that deer were forming a conga line in the backyard every morning at five am.<\/p>\n

I have also failed to give the garden my best on occasion, not mulching because the bags were too heavy, not weeding because it was 90 degrees outside, not watering because it was too much trouble to uncoil the hose, and ignoring the Japanese beetles hosting daily orgies in my roses.<\/p>\n

Every single one of those garden infractions made me feel guilty in greater or lesser degrees.\u00a0 After all, the net result of most of them was that plants\u2014many of which are very desirable and a few of which were relatively expensive\u2014suffered.\u00a0 More than a few died, leaving leafless corpses to bear solemn witness to my horticultural sins.<\/p>\n

For years I wallowed in guilt over my deficiencies.\u00a0 Then, a few years ago, I decided that I would put it behind me. Shedding guilt has lightened my psychic load and made me a better gardener.<\/p>\n

Guilt never saved a plant, killed an aphid or scared away a groundhog.\u00a0 It always takes up time and energy that would be better spent doing creative things in the garden.\u00a0 Guilt is much more about self-flagellation than motivation.\u00a0 The world gives all of us enough of the former and not enough of the latter.<\/p>\n

I love roses, but inevitably some of them die.\u00a0 Sometimes this is because they were already afflicted with rose disease when they were purchased.\u00a0 Disease does not always manifest itself in the first year, but causes the plant to decline thereafter.\u00a0 But even perfectly healthy roses sometimes die, because they were planted in the wrong place, couldn\u2019t outcompete their neighbors or were neglected by the gardener.<\/p>\n

Whatever the reason, the best remedy for a dead rose is a moment of regret and twenty minutes of serious digging to get the plant out of the ground, followed by a trip to the garden center or a wallow in the pages of a garden catalog to find a replacement plant.\u00a0 Guilt over the dead rose would only bog down that process.<\/p>\n

Deer, groundhogs, squirrels, rabbits and other garden varmints do not care how guilty\u2014or even angry\u2014you feel about failing to deter them.\u00a0 Instead of feeling guilty, vent whatever anger you have on a mound of bread dough or a messy closet, and use your ingenuity to decide what to do next.\u00a0 In the time it takes to luxuriate in guilt, you could order some critter-proof plants, like foxgloves in ten different shades, or a stand of gorgeous blue monkshood.\u00a0 If you find yourself overburdened with cash, you could make plans to build a walled or thoroughly fenced garden that would be off limits to varmints.\u00a0 Those solutions cost money, but they don\u2019t extract nearly the psychic toll of guilt.<\/p>\n

What about all that neglected watering, weeding and mulching?\u00a0 Guilt feeds procrastination, not motivation.\u00a0 Remedy past omissions by thinking realistically about what you can and can\u2019t do and finding garden solutions that fit your personal parameters.\u00a0 Putting down mulch makes for less weeding.\u00a0 Watering means fewer struggling plants.\u00a0 Instead of feeling guilty and procrastinating for another season, think of future garden activities in terms of their potential for return on investment of time, energy and money.<\/p>\n

Guilt has never made a great garden, but it has caused an awful lot of recurring headaches.\u00a0 This spring, shed that pain and regain the joy of gardening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 There are two kinds of guilt\u2014guilt for things done and guilt for things left undone.\u00a0 Most people suffer from one or the other, or both, from time to time.\u00a0 Some of us, especially those who have either had mothers and\/or been mothers, are masters at the art of guilt, whether we lay it on … 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":[4,6,2,3,5],"tags":[2463,2462,813,85,1164],"class_list":["post-3325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-deer-resistant-gardening","tag-garden-guilt","tag-garden-humor","tag-garden-maintenance","tag-garden-pests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3325","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=3325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3327,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3325\/revisions\/3327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}