Is it too late to say Happy New Year?
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and festive season salutations! As the first Monday of a fresh new year, it feels like the perfect time to start afresh. It always feels a little odd to be calling a fresh start when we’re in the middle of a growing season – but it is what it is, and I’ve been doing a bit of reflecting and navel gazing to seek out ways to have a more effective and efficient gardening journey this year.
Things did get a bit hectic towards the end of the year and something had to give, and I made the decision to ease back on my social media in order to survive the festive season. One of the things that this highlighted was the need for some kind of change to the way I do things in the garden and in life. The other major factor driving the need for change is I have a very important group coming to visit my garden in November immediately after a three-week absence from the garden and I feel a little nervous given the state of the garden on coming back from three weeks away last November.
Not that all groups who visit my garden aren’t important – I have three lovely garden groups coming to visit in February, so I have five weeks to sort things out. I scheduled them all together, so I only needed to prepare the garden once, and I’m toying with the idea of opening the garden to the public around there too… while it’s all looking nice.
I’m also in the process of building Room Three. Up to this point it has been slow going and I’ve had plenty of excuses as to why, but I won’t bore you with all of those. But on the whole I have had lot going on in and out of the garden.
With all of these impending visits, and the pickle I got myself into – I didn’t tell anyone but my corners of shame about the garden are positively shameful, and I was too ashamed to mention it. But now I have some pretty serious restoration required to fix what should have take moments before I let things get out of control – my bad… I think the theme and motivation for 2025 needs to be implementing low maintenance strategies so stop things going awry. Besides, I’m not getting any younger.
So, this week I have decided, I’ll go back through the events of last year – open and honestly and work out how and why things got out of control. I’ll also do a deep stock take of the garden to determine exactly what needs to be done, taking note of everything, no matter how big or small. Having the small things on the list means I can cross easy things off quickly to give a feel-good factor. Then I’ll come up with a realistic set of goals and an action plan to get them done.
That sounds like a great starting point to be getting on with, but I can’t stand about here all-day yapping, there is gardening to do… and quite a lot of it!
Come again soon – 2025 is going to be a good year – it needs to be!
Sarah the Gardener : o)