Where did things go wrong?

Where did things go wrong?

I am standing in the gap between years and looking back to figure out how I should go forward.

One big reason the garden wasn’t the sole focus of my world was last year there was a lot of travel, which enabled the slide into dodgy weedy edges.  The travel was exciting and mostly work related – if not mine, then Hubby the Un-Gardener’s.  There were two short trips for conferences, two cruises as guest speakers and finally my three-week Botanica tour.

There is an expression that says, “The best fertilizer is the gardener’s shadow” and while exciting, the garden does suffer in my absence. This year will be the same, except we don’t have any speaking gigs on cruises booked.  I need to make a plan to lessen the impact that travel brings to my garden.

My own self sabotage is a bit of a problem. I’ll use slightly inclement weather as an excuse and I may spend a little too long looking at things on my phone that aren’t edifying – let’s face it, I’m never going to take up pottery, but we can gloss over this because I’ve promised myself to be better!  I’m going to make dramatic changes in this department.

We can’t ignore health issues.  I had the dreaded Covid and of all things I got Chicken Pox!  My MS fatigue can steal a lot of time from the garden, and this can’t be ignored. Hopefully 2025 will be much healthier and  I’m putting things in place to reduce the risk of bad health days.

In the garden I’m my own worst enemy.  I’m a wannabe control freak but am super messy at the same time.  I don’t put things away, promising myself I’ll do a big clean up at the end – which never happens because there is no time.  Time I wasted looking for things not left in the right place.

The weedy corners crept in because I didn’t have a plan.  I focused on keeping what I’d done in control – which is a good thing, but if I ran out of time for an area, instead of picking up where I left off I started back at the start.  So, while parts of the garden stayed nice other areas got worse and worse.  I’m always telling people “Little weeds take minutes, and big weeds take hours” but I don’t listen to my own advice. 

I also have two handy helpers working three hours each. I work beside them to maximise time, which gives twelve hours that maybe wouldn’t have been done for above reasons.  But we seem to have fallen into a trap of just weeding the easy stuff once a week instead of making a dent in problem areas.  So, I need to be more efficient with my use of these twelve hours.

I may have also bitten off more than I can chew, and the garden is probably too big, but that is not about to change now.  There are ideas in my head dying to get out!

Another thing that can’t be changed is the weather.  So much harm and destruction can come from the howling hoolie laden with salt or days and days of persistent heavy rain keeping me from getting there.  But it is what it is and needs some kind of strategy for coping with the conditions.

Finally, I need to treat the garden like a job, with a mean boss (me).  Because at the end of the day it is my job, not that it pays me, but it makes all the other things that do pay me possible.  Without the garden I’d be bored, hungry and penniless, but I need to ponder these problems and come up with an action plan.

Although to be fair, the garden isn’t raging out of control and the source of constant nightmares.  If I had visitors coming, it wouldn’t take long to make the mess disappear and they’d ooh and ahh about how lovely it is.  It  just isn’t as weed free, organised and streamline as I’d like it and if I keep going the way I’m going it will suck the joy right out of it and overwhelm it with guilt and frustration.

After critical assessment I think these are the pinch points stopping the garden being a joy and a pleasure that is easy to look after.  It turns out the biggest problem is me.  I’m my own worst enemy.  Change can be challenging but knowing the consequences of my actions, setting up strategies for successful change under the guise of new year resolutions should be easy… right?!

Come again soon – change is afoot!

Sarah the Gardener.  : o)