Dear Dee and Mary Ann and Gardening Friends Everywhere,

Did you ever feel like the days go by so quickly that you can hardly remember what you did from one day to the next? I feel like that sometimes, which is why I try to write down “important gardening news” in my 10 year garden journal.

For this past week, looking through my journal, I can report that yesterday (Sunday), was a gloomy, rainy, cold day and I did nothing in the garden except run out and take some crazy picture of the hyacinths all rowed up for my post yesterday.

On Saturday, I mowed the front yard for the first time. It barely needed to be mowed, but it was a nice day and I really, really wanted to mow again with that new Fiskars® Momentum™ Reel Mower, so I mowed anyway. So far so good. The reel mower does take a bit of getting used to. For one thing, it doesn’t cut grass when pulled backwards, like a gas powered mower does, so there’s no backing up over an area to cut where you might have missed. But I do like it and I’ll keep using it and trying it out each week, now that the mowing season has started.

The rest of the week is a bit of a blur and I just wrote in my gardening journal what the high and low temps were and if it was sunny or cloudy. I did write down that I planted lettuce seeds on Monday, and then came inside and sowed seeds for tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. But other than that, between work and weather and other activities, I didn’t have a chance to do much else in the garden.

Whenever I have a moment or two, I’ve been steadily reading through the book the Garden Designer left me, Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway. She was smart to leave me that book to read because with every page, I think of more that I want to change in my garden. I even want to change up the vegetable garden, which I had previously told her was fine “as is”. She’s returning this evening with her Partner in Digging to show me the plans and concepts she has so far. This evening!

This may seem silly, but the other day, when I was thinking about the garden design, and how much of the garden I’d like to change, I wondered if this is my midlife crisis. Doesn’t everyone go through some kind of midlife crisis at some point when they reach a “certain age”? I guess some people buy fancy sports cars, or quit their jobs and run off to Europe, or maybe put big ol’ swimming pools in their backyards. None of that appeals to me at all. If this is my midlife crisis, I’m happy that it is an overhaul of my garden.

And with that I’ll close this letter before I start getting too deep into analysis, ala Dr. Hortfreud.

Hortifully yours,
Carol

P.S. The picture above is of some species tulips in my garden, I believe it is Tulipa biflora. I took a picture of its first open bloom on Saturday, but that came out all fuzzy. On Sunday, when I took this picture, none of the blooms were open… too cold and gloomy outside.

P.S.S.  I’m going to finally plant radishes and onion sets this week, since the moon is changing from waxing to waning.