Clearly I'm getting old. Or lazy. Because most of the older generation that I know have far more ambition than I do. Like my awesome next door neighbor. That man's garden would scoff at Martha Stewart's piddly tryings, and he's been retired for decades. My dad is another. He lives just across the road. His garden, too, is producing a month before mine is even planted (because I always forget to plant onions in March) and he maintains not only the farm lawn but their cabin an hour away, too. So the only logical solution is that I'm lazy, because apparently age has nothing to do with slowing down and losing interest.
But there's good news! July pushed my re-set button. While things were a bit out of hand from a lack of interest and just getting by with bare minimal gardening, I have finally found my enthusiasm for growing things and outdoor work.
Thank goodness. I wasn't sure I liked that phase I was going through.
It WAS a phase, right?
We'll pretend that it was, because I'm not sure what else it would be. And I'll hope that it was a very short lived one that never returns.
So. In my renewed interest of all things gardening, my list of to-do is getting a wee bit shorter each day. So far I've put the UV filter and new pump in the pond, Sam built our pergola and firewood bin, the chicken coop run was moved to it's permanent location, the dog kennel was re-done, the flower beds were all edged with my snappy new edging tool (which I made the teen boys use), Josh and I put a new floor in the playhouse and I turned it into a garden shed (although it needs help on the outside, but small steps), I added some artistic touches to a few gardens, Josh and I put stone steps in at the patio (landscaping needs done around them yet), and the fairy garden wagon was re-purposed since nobody played with the fairies this summer.
I find it amusing that each summer, a new garden is my favorite. Mostly it's the one that I put the most work into that year. The garden shed garden is my new favorite this year.
(Ignore the fact that the garden shed needs help. Its on my list!)
I think the thing that I love about this garden is that it's so low maintenance, and filled with such fun things that were previously trash. Or next to it. The wagon was purchased at a yard sale in Alaska for Becky's vintage-themed nursery. It's so rusted, and yet so awesome. I had a fairy garden in that last summer, but the fairies moved over winter when their house fell apart so I gave it a fresh coat of paint and a new purpose. The watering can was sitting in a forgotten corner of the house, growing weeds out of the leftover dirt inside it. That, too, was cleaned out and re-purposed.
The birdhouse was in Sam's grandfather's yard. We inherited that when he passed away, and I never did know what to do with it. I just tacked it into the ground to get it out of the way, and kind of loved the look of it. I also love that this garden is turning into the memory collection.
Oh, and those rocks behind it? Friends of ours were moving and had a stack of some of the most awesome stones ever by their garage. They kindly donated them to me before they moved out. Those stones are going to be featured here and there and a little bit of everywhere for years to come. I am soooo in love with them. And I love that they, too, have a story attached to them in the memory garden.
And no garden is complete without whimsical art. When I was cleaning up around the playhouse-turned-garden-shed I found these metal pipes. They were leftovers from the kennel re-do. I figured I'd just drive them into the ground for art and love them for the fact that they're old and rusty and very unexpected in a garden. I'm not sure that I love the pink ball as much as I thought I would, but it's a work in progress. You know, like any art.
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