I'm feeling down about the garden today. I'm trying not to let the negative urges get to me--I had a pretty good day otherwise. But for some reason I got really bummed out about my garden after doing the evening rounds when I got home from work.
My tomato seedlings were quite pathetic this year, and most of them have hardly grown since their first potting up, let alone since they've been in the ground. The two that have actually shown some initiative don't even have any flowers yet, and it's almost August! The bush buttercup squashes got some nice big leaves, albeit only a couple of inches off the ground, then put out a few flowers and then...plbt. The leaves are starting to go pale and the flowers closed back up with no fertile female bumps promising future fruits. The honeydew melons I started haven't gotten any bigger than the first set of true leaves that they put out about a month or so ago. And despite all kinds of protection and help, the basil is struggling. I should have put them up off the ground in containers, since the only ones that did well last year were the container-grown ones. But NO, I had faith in my protective cup covers (and was using all the containers for other things, anyway).
I prepped their beds with expensive organic composts and soils and manures. I mulched them well and tried to water them well enough. But I think our nights have been too cool, our rain has been too scarce, and I suspect at least some of the seeds were inferior. So I can try to console myself by concluding that it isn't my fault, but that doesn't make it any easier to accept: I think this year's food garden is going to be mostly a failure. And it makes me want to cry.
The flowers haven't turned out as well as I'd hoped, either. The astilbe struggled along despite being babied with extra water, and finally has died off completely. The two lime heucheras are practically dead, and the two peach heucheras are being munched to within an inch of their life. I finally got some Neem, but as soon as I started treating all the munched plants, the rains finally returned. My calendulas never showed any real signs of growth and now what little leafage they had is being eaten away. The sages were avoiding predation really well until about a week ago. Out of dozens of strawflowers transplanted out, less than half a dozen ended up surviving the bugs, diggers, and excessive early heat waves, and only two have enough growth to be showing signs of flowers. So many other things never flowered at all, or didn't spread like I thought they would, or died off too quickly. The final batch of nasturtium seeds FINALLY produced numerous sets of leaves but not a sign of flowers as they start showing signs of dying off. So many disappointments in the rest of the garden as well this year.
Not only does it make me want to cry: sometimes it makes me want to give up, too.
But I have two factors fighting against that. 1) My will. 2) A very long winter approaching.
As much time as I may spend staring out the window with red-rimmed eyes and wet cheeks, feeling lost in the despair and melancholy of not being able to create the enchanting tableaux I imagined after devoting so much time and effort (and money); as much as I might swear and tear at the ground with my bare hands in frustration and desperation; as fast as my heart may beat in anger when I look around and see nothing but annoying work to be done and nothing to show for it, these are all temporary reactions. They are also the flash points that lead to progress. When the time comes to make the decision to forge ahead or forget the whole thing, I'm not going to give up! I'm not going to lose what ground I've managed to gain! I may not be able to see any accomplishments in those moments of desperation, but I am aware that I will be able to see them later when my head is in a better place. And I don't want to lose them. So I either push myself forward or wait until I'm in that better mental place, and then take on each challenge as best I can, keeping some hope alive that with time and patience things will steadily improve.
Time and patience and hope are really important in the Land of Long Winters. All that time stuck indoors surrounded by brown and white makes me long for growing things --long for them so much that most of the mistakes and disappointments of the past get pushed aside and pooh-poohed, because THIS year is going to be different. This year I'm going to try something new. This year is going to be the year that something which failed me in the past is going to surprise me with wondrous bounty. This year the weather is going to be lucky. This year I'm going to start things earlier. But since I can't start them too early, I have months in which to plan, and in planning I have hours upon hours to reflect upon what I've learned, especially what I can learn from mistakes. I can reevaluate whether things should be moved in the spring, or divided. Which combinations worked and which didn't. Which ones might work if I tweak them a little. I enjoy planning as much, if not more, than actually doing. So, Winter is gloriously ripe for dreaming of gardens yet to be and of turning those dreams into lists, diagrams, more lists, collages of little printed pictures and catalog cutouts, more lists...
Of course, the next year is going to be a little different. I will really have to focus on being smarter and resourceful, rather than indulging my penchant for garden abundance. Even though the news from the surgeon is better than our worst case scenario, Tim's hernia surgery is still going to cost us dearly in multiple financial ways. There will be no new bulbs this fall. There will be no boxes of seedlings arriving on my doorstep in the fall or the spring. There won't even be any shopping sprees at local nurseries. Next year will be a year of seeing which of the remaining seeds from previous years are still viable, of using my digging days to divide any good candidates, of experimenting with new locations for plants that aren't as happy as I think they could be, and of keeping an eye on the development of all the plants I've adopted so far. It's going to be incredibly hard for me. I'm a garden glutton. But I can do it. There will probably be whining, and pouting, certainly some melancholy, almost definitely some anger and resentment, and probably even tears. But it will be good for me, and next year I just might have my best garden yet.
