Start This Thing Called a Garden

When was that time of the season when I could sit back and relax because the spring gardening to-do list was finished, with everything crossed off as done?

Never. Never was that time.

A garden is ever-changing, after all, and never finished.

Who was it that said gardening is the slowest of all art forms but unlike other art forms, like painting a picture of a garden, is never finished?

Describing gardening that way makes it sound like something only a mad woman (or man) would do.

“Hey, start this thing called a garden, and oh, by the way, you’ll never be finished with it.”

But here we are!

Looking bravely toward fall and a brand new to-do list, or more correctly, adding items to a to-do list that’s never finished.

This week, I’m adding several items to my current to-do list! Here are three of those items.

(1) Plant out the lavender seedlings, now small plants. I started these from seeds for a Family Handyman article. I think their best chance of surviving the winter will be in the ground in time for their roots to become established. I will plant them out soon, as soon as I figure out where.

(2) Take cuttings from the African Blue Basil. The ever-enabling gardener (and my friend and co-host of the podcast), Dee told me about this plant so when I saw it for sale in Spring ’22, I bought it, and then I took cuttings from it last fall. I managed to get them to take root, and I kept them (well three of them) growing all through winter, planted them out in the spring, and got this big gorgeous plant out of the deal, so I’m going to do it again.

(3) Bring in this hanging plant, Tradescantia ‘Pistachio White’ and keep it as a houseplant. OR take cuttings from it to overwinter. There are two issues with bringing it inside to be a houseplant. First, I don’t know where I’d hang it. Second, I’m pretty sure that bringing it in “as is” would also mean bringing in countless spiders who seem to be constantly revealing themselves by making webs in the wire hangers. Cuttings it is!

Those three to-do items are top of mind right now so you’re probably wondering why I included a picture of a geranium at the beginning of this post. (Or did you skip right past that picture? Did you just scroll back up to see it?)

I have four “fancy” geraniums, two of which I successfully overwintered last year by putting them in the garage when I cleaned up the patio for winter. I’m going to do that again with the four geraniums I have this summer and see if they’ll survive until spring. It takes almost no effort on my part, so it’s worth trying again.

But I have weeks to go before I put that on a to-do list.

“Hey, start this thing called a garden, and oh, by the way, you’ll never be finished with it.”