It is no surprise in this topsy turvy year that summer is kicking off cold, wet, windy, and miserable. It’s like it didn’t get the memo or it just doesn’t care. I don’t mind a bumbling summer that is bit slow to catch up, but a deliberately nasty season with intentional storms is quite concerning. But the boffins are saying it is going to be a La Nina summer with hot humid stormy weather. I don’t trust them either – after that whole storm debacle of last week. However, it is clear it won’t be my perfect dream summer and I suspect I will be learning new lessons about growing in this coastal situation. It is me vs the weather! I would like to win this round.
With a new season comes a lot of reflection and introspection and possibly a bit of navel gazing. How am I going? How is the garden going? What do I need to do to make 2021 better – in spite of any weirdness going on around me. While I haven’t been directly impacted by the drama – aside from not going anywhere for weeks and weeks and the fear of the risk of catching something nasty, things just haven’t been the same. I started the year in a good place with good routines and at several points along the way the garden was also in a good place with good routines. But something is amiss. I can’t put my finger on it but for some reason all gardening – outdoor garden gardening and indoor computer and kitchen gardening became almost like a chore. The large cloud hanging over us stole the joy from the things I love.
Well not anymore. I am going to take back that joy and plant it firmly where it belongs and nurture it and watch it grow. And what better time to do it than at the start of a festive season where joy is one of the messages that goes with it. Joy to the World! It may be challenging at first – especially as the festive season is a busy time anyway – but when combined with a burgeoning garden it can be downright chaotic!
I will endeavour to share my joy with you all regularly as joy is thing to be shared, not hidden away. It might be a simple picture of a pretty flower, or the recipe of something fresh from the garden that you ‘just have to try’, a tale of a magnificent harvest, or a story of a journey with flower garden that just never seems to get planted.
Come again – summer has just begun, and it will be wonderful.
Sarah the Gardener : o)
I’m not much of a one for growing zucchini (I like that the way they reliably grow, but dislike the way they set land speed records turning into marrows), but that zucchini flower is like a patch of trapped sunshine! Just the thing for a grey day with howling southerlies.
I haven’t mustered up the courage to go out and see what has survived the (ongoing) gales, although it’s plain the redcurrants are bared to the birds again. Progress not perfection, I tell myself.
I don’t mind the marrows, I peel and slice them and then marinate them in yummy flavours and dehydrate them. The kids eat them like chips. In the height of summer we are on a marrow a day! : o)
https://gardeningkiwi.wordpress.com/2017/01/31/marrow-chips/
I have my fabulous Italian gardener here today doing the things I can’t. She always smiles, and we both get excited about what’s popping up. I too must pick my two courgettes today before more rain, they shot up over night and I counted 6 more flowers already. Bit like apple cucumbers, those things I swear are on fertility pills. Tuesdays and my gardener are my joy.
I always look forward to those first zucchini but after a while that welcome wears a little thin! It is so great you have some help. : o)
I’m over the wind here in Marlborough .The temps also cool one day & hot the next , my poor wee plants are not that happy.
I am so with you. Being right on the coast the wind is a constant. The poor garden is being buffered about. I long for the lovely settled warm days ahead. : o)
Hot, humid ‘and’ stormy just sounds funny. I still think of the climate there as being similar to ours, just because there are climates ‘near’ there that really are similar to ours. Well, that is what we learned in school. I know it is a bit place,with many different climates.We get warm weather, but not in conjunction with humidity or storms. We get storms, but even the warm ones are rather cool. Humidity comes only with rain.
I much prefer the hot dry summers as the humid ones can be quite unpleasant and the summer storms can often be quite devastating. It is all tied up with La Nina and El Nino conditions and all sorts of other meteorological events. : o)
Yes, if only we had such choices.