Goodnight, Garden

It’s nearly the end of another gardening season where I live. We’re lucky enough to have a longer summer and fall than the even more northerly city where I grew up, but it does eventually come to an end. (There’s a reason Canadian Thanksgiving falls more than six weeks earlier than its American equivalent…)

To be honest, I’m a bit relieved. Not because I like winter (I really, really don’t) but because I got overambitious this summer. I planted too much, had too many high-maintenance plants, and set my expectations for myself too high while at the same time feeling constantly behind. Problems came up and I didn’t deal with them effectively, or sometimes at all. Then what was supposed to be fun and relaxing became stressful instead.

Wait, was I talking about gardening, or…?

Anyway, some things I learned this year:

1. It’s okay to enjoy and value things that are easy. We have a lot of easy flowers that need minimal care –  hydrangeas and ever-bearing shrub roses, marigolds and snapdragons and potted pansies. They’re all gorgeous and/or delicious, and they make me smile. Would they be even more gorgeous if I tended them more closely, or perhaps if they were rarer and more finicky varieties? Sure, but they’re good enough just the way they are. On the vegetable side, cherry tomatoes and basil are also easy to grow and/or to pick and process…which is equally important.

2. It’s also okay to get ambitious and make mistakes – as long as you step back before ambition tips too far into stress, and make a point of noting the small successes. (Still working on this part.) So what if we only got 8 or 10 carrots? Each one was delicious and celebrated. The tomato jungle? My staking job could have been more effective, and maybe it would have resulted in a bigger harvest…but we still didn’t have to eat any store-bought tomatoes for six weeks or more.

3. Some things are mixed successes, and that’s a learning experience too. The scarlet runner beans were tasty and easy to grow, but a pain to process (all that shelling!) unless you nabbed them young, which we mostly didn’t. Next year we’ll know to either be more diligent or grow a different kind of bean. We thought zucchini were easy based on past experience, but this year the squirrels ate most of them; next year we’ll get around to trying some squirrel-repellent methods.

We probably won’t do bell peppers or eggplant again, but we probably will do hot peppers and some kind of winter squash, and I’d love to try strawberries. And just today I bought some flower bulbs, to be planted shortly – can’t wait to see them give the front garden a head start next spring.

In the meantime, we’ll be putting the garden to bed…and I’ll spend the winter thinking of ways to make things easier on myself next summer, and forgetting all the stress and hard work and remembering only the pleasure of the results, and plotting how not to go crazy in the garden centre next spring.

You know, like one does.