Quote du jour/Monty Don, and gardening plans for 2019

In any garden, change is the only constant.
Monty Don on
Gardeners' World








Recently I wrote this in a book post.

 Nigel
My family and other dogs
by Monty Don
nonfiction 2016
print
finished 7/1/18
English writer/English setting

This is the year that Monty Don has come into our lives. Britbox began offering the English television program Gardeners' World. It is one of the best shows I've ever seen. Monty Don is the warm, calm, reassuring, enthusiastic, humble host. I bought two of his books, follow him on Instagram, and am also watching some other shows he has done via Netflix. Wonderful how we can get these programs over here now! Nigel is his aging Golden Retriever. He and a younger Golden, Nell are the real stars of Gardeners' World. Don writes about the other dogs in his life, telling a bit about his own life in the bargain. Really wonderful. I loved it.

Honestly, this man has changed my life just by showing up every week on my television. He has encouraged me to get back into serious gardening.

In 2009 we made the decision to go with raised beds. The first post about them is here. They were fine for a while, but the wood began to rot, it wasn't easy to mow right up to them so that involved the extra work of using the big trimmer along each side, which wasn't easy because it might hit the wood.

Eventually we removed them, and put flowers in the areas where the raised beds were. I think we went a year without growing vegetables. And then I wrote about the new idea of a terrific garden right beside the patio/entranceway.

It has worked well, but was very crowded. Last year it felt like outdoor clutter with stuff all over the place. In the fall we made a lot of changes. We decided the patio garden would be just flowers, not a combination of flowers and vegetables. We transplanted iris, peonies, daylilies, aquilegia, and others into that garden. We also planted daffodils across the road - all varieties that we heard about from Monty; Bath's Flame, Ice Follies, and Thalia - 30 in all. This whole area is now full of daffs.

Early in the year we had taken up the flowers that were in the former raised beds on the lawn and put in 6 raspberry plants - those little sticks that you see.

And then a couple weeks ago, I found myself saying to Tom that I wanted what I called a "real" vegetable garden, a big garden with rows. I want to grow tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, leeks, onions, peas, corn, potatoes, basil, parsley, cabbage, garlic. It will not be off the kitchen, where the raspberries are and which is the fenced in yard for Lucy. Instead it is going to go just beyond the daffodils, in that open area past the clothesline.

Yes, it will be work, but it is good work. I need exercise. Walking just doesn't happen every day no matter my good intentions. And fresh vegetables at the Co-op or at farmers' markets are not cheap. The plan is to have the rows between vegetables wide enough that the Mantis can till there, and remove weeds, so the only weeding I'll have to do is between plants. 

I think a lot about what I call "subtraction". I read so much about people my age scaling down, going smaller, getting rid of things. Well, I don't want to do that. I want to add; add a vegetable garden, add a second or third dog in a few years. We don't have the money to travel, but we are lucky, lucky to have family close by. We are lucky to have a home and animals. We are lucky to so far be healthy except for this knee of mine. PD James has a book that she wrote when she was 77 (which I plan to read when I turn that age), called Time to Be in Earnest. Well, the title is what I want to do now. If not now, then when? I want my grandchildren to see us as vigorous vegetable growers. I've always thought the best death was Marlon Brando as the Godfather dying in his tomato patch. Though I wouldn't want the grandchildren seeing it, as happened in the movie!

Gardeners' World and Monty Don have changed me and influenced me. I am quite positive that show is why I have this new plan. This season Frances Tophill

shared an allotment with a young fellow, and their enthusiasm for fresh, right out of the garden food made me miss what was always such a part of me. I'll be forever grateful that Britbox brought this program to the US. 

A nursery in the garden

One of the definitions of nursery is:

 a place or natural habitat that breeds or supports animals

And going on that, my garden is a bit of a nursery just now because there are caterpillars living on my one and only parsley plant that will turn into black swallowtail butterflies! They are called parsley worms, though they'll also live off dill or carrots. I counted six, but didn't move the plant leaves to see if there were any others. You may read more about them here. In all my years of gardening, I've not seen them or heard of them before now.

Blueberries - 2018 report

This is the last batch of blueberries for 2018. This will be the third year that I've kept track. 2016 is here, and 2017 is here. It really helps me to keep records, and here is why. I thought we had gotten quite a lot of berries this year. But no. Last year the fellow picked from July 31 through August 23. This year, July 28 - August 10.

In 2017 there were a lot fewer than in 2016. 43 quarts down from 61 quarts. We thought it must have been the rainy spring. This year we didn't have a rainy spring but we had exceedingly hot weather, and went weeks without rain. In 2018 we bought only 26 quarts.

Here is the breakdown.

July 28 - 5 quarts
July 30 - 4 quarts
August 2 - 4 quarts
August 4 - 2 quarts
August 6 - 4 quarts
August 8 - 4 quarts
August 10 - 3 quarts

He went up 50¢ a quart, so we paid $6. In all the cost this year was $156.

The fate of the blueberries is much like our gardens this year. The vegetables are doing fine, but the daylilies haven't had a good year. Because it was so very hot, we couldn't get out and weed very much, and there are weeds everywhere. Not just little, easy-to-pull weeds, but tall ones all interspersed among the flowers. I think this is just a year that I must write off, and hope it doesn't come again. We did quite a lot of watering, but it just wasn't enough with the sun beating down relentlessly, day after day.