Garden chores
Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Jerry Jackson
Faithful readers of Garden Variety know that on Fridays I offer a list of weekend chores to do in the garden.
I cull this list from the experts. There are several garden bloggers are who very good at keeping the rest of us on task. Margaret Roach of A Way to Garden. Susan Harris, a multi-tasking blogger, who is writing for Behnke's Nursery of Beltsville. And Kathy Jentz of Washington Gardener Magazine.
This week, I'd like to share my own, not-very-expert, list of chores -- a list that can be found in the pink marble notebook I have been keeping since 1999.
On most weekends, I do two or three hours of work and then pour myself a glass of wine and sit on the front steps to record my thoughts in this battered old notebook.
Sitting outside is not only pleasant, it reminds me of what I saw in the garden that needed done.
In spring and again in fall, the lists are long, and they usually involve plans for major changes in the gardens. Sometimes I follow through, but often I do not. I often bite off more than I can chew.
The Spring 2011 list is made up of notes from the fall about that I must remember to do this season -- I am going to do a lot more cutting back of perennials, like Joe Pye Weed and helianthus, that grew much too large last year.
And notes from last weekend, about what is left to do to get the gardens ready for summer. I still have to spread my coffee grounds and my osmocote on the perennial beds, turn the compost pile and change the batteries in the garden lights.
(There is also a list here for my DH. He has to cut back the ornamental grasses and the liriope and edge the beds for me. It would also be a help if he would finally take down the Christmas lights in the Nelly Stevens. But he might argue the point.)
If I look back through the pages of this book, I see the lessons I have learned in the garden and the plans I have made and changed and changed again.
It is not very formal, not very complete. But it is serviceable.
