I barely know what I’m doing with my brand new garden, and yet, I’m already mired in fretting — it’s ridiculous! My fret d’jour is the huge rabbit I saw meandering through our back yard this morning — he was one of the fattest I’ve seen since I moved to Iowa City. I was on the phone with my Mom at the time, so I couldn’t run out and chase him away, but now I feel like I need to sit on the back porch with my feet propped up on the railing and a slingshot at hand…

My first-ever garden hasn’t even been in the ground for a week, and I’m already fretting. I guess it’s the nature of the beast.

Genie
The Inadvertent Gardener

Weather: It’s never right.

Missing perennials: I guess the dry weather has been harder on the “permanent” plants than I realized. Many things didn’t sprout this year, including some that were very reliable.

Backlog: Started to dig a new bed several weeks ago, and stalled. The weeds do not wait for me. Need to prune the trees in back of the house up higher. The weeds do not wait for me (bears repeating).

Indecision: Can’t make up my mind about the compostion of the container plantings this year, so have done nothing. Bought a Japanese Maple which absolutely looks bad where I thought it would be perfect, so where to put it instead?

And on and on. And this is the good time of the year when everything is fresh and green and the bugs and diseases haven’t yet shown themselves.

I was really glad to read this post because for weeks there in March and April I was going out to the raised bed in the back yard and staring at the spots where I’d planted bulbs as if eyepower could substitute for sunlight.

When the first leaves appeared, I switched to fretting over the seedlings in the basement, most of which are doing well, except for the wretched lavender and the obstreperous viola, both of which pretty much gave me the raspberry and refused to germinate (although the moss and algae [lichen?] on the seed cells is doing great). I finally gave up and bought lavender plants locally.

Then I found the “currently delighting in:” I’d inadvertently saved a patch of violets (I didn’t know what they were, but when I dug up several things the raised bed I saved that plant without even knowing why). Now they’re blooming, and so pretty I don’t even care that they’re also popping up around the yard.

Although I’ve been fretting about the drought down here in Texas the last 9 months, accompanied with fretting about the danger from wildfires (Was it really wise to mulch my yard with ground up Christmas trees when every county in central Texas has been under a burn ban since January 1st?)

And just as I’m installing more and more desert plants to cope with these dry conditions, we get 7 inches of rain in three days. Will all these plants rot and turn to mush?

And horrible summer is just around the corner. Will we beat our record of 40 100+ degree days that we had a few years back?

Well, I’m ready to wash my hands of it until fall. I’m off for a week to the lovely Cotswolds, in England where they really have this gardening thing down. I’m hoping to visit Hidcote.

Fretful M–