Friday, January 2, 2009

Gardening Year Round

The winter is now really here, the Holidays are past, and I am getting my seed and flower catalogs! Even in winter, that gardener in me is searching through my Burpee, Park Seed, and so many more that come through my mailbox every year - sometimes just the pictures get me excited. Each year I find new kinds of flowers to try in my small plot and I love to see the results my experimenting creates.

Depending on the requirements, I find that various plants grow well, while others either fail, or disappear after a year or two. I'm really a perennial kind of person with a few annuals to fill the few empty spaces every year. One year I put in some perennial lupines and that year they were lovely, but they simply died out after that. That can happen sometimes depending on your soil and conditions.

I'm more a person who loves cottage gardens - you know, that random almost wild look that so captivated the Victorian gardeners. Gardens are often the extension of the he or she who does the digging and planting, and that is definitely true of me. I'll enjoy the catalogs, but I do so long for that dirty fingernail experience that comes every spring when winter has passed!

So tomorrow, I will be looking through my mail for more of those precious catalogs, that bring many more ideas for this year's garden. My mom was quite a gardener, and so were my grandmothers on both sides. I truly believe it's in my blood so it is what I write about during winter and long for - that season of muck and that smell of the moist, fragrant earth. That winter white and cold temperatures is the time when the only flowers in or near my gardens are the "feathered" kind!

Gardens are really for love - the love of nature and that love of sharing them with others.

No comments:

Post a Comment