Life without FB has definitely improved.

Haven’t written anything but did get out to the garden.  We had “gardeners” for the six plus years we’ve lived here and about a month ago they disappeared off the face of the earth.  They are a couple of middle aged surfer looking guys who have been gardening this home since the first owner lived here a long time ago.  Nobody knows what happened.  Our next door neighbor and others they worked for have not seen them. Not sure if they are ever coming back.  The next door neighbor uses the same vet and apparently their ancient doggie died so we thought maybe they were just taking a few weeks but it’s looking less and less likely they will be back. Surfers. What can you say?

It’s kind of ok except that we don’t own a lawn mower for our 12′ x 20′ lawn so it’s looking like a Midwest grassy field which is nice but a bit unwieldy to walk through and I worry about snakes when I venture over to refill the hummingbird feeders. Al told me just now he ordered a lawn mower today, and old fashioned human powered lawn mower.

I finally had to take the bull by the horns.  This isn’t a problem as I have always liked to garden and just was kind of lazy about it after moving. Truth be told, the guys had started to get lazy themselves. Suddenly weeds weren’t getting pulled, pruning wasn’t getting done and worst of all, although they started out NOT using blowers, they started USING blowers. I hate that.

We had some landscaping done recently due to the fact that we had a little hill where nothing grew because the water just drained down hill.  So we had it terraced. See photo.  If I remember to add it to this post. Anyway, I had to get a few new tools – a Mary sized shovel, a weed puller thingy (found my old one but they are easily lost in the shuffle so two isn’t so bad, some new gloves (always nice), a small rake, a hand scooper thing. Dug out old clippers and an electric clipper, a long handled weed puller and oiled them all.

The rest of the garden is just a thin strip along the back wall, no more than three feet deep. The part right near the patio is a pollinator’s Garden of Eden with all kinds of yummy stuff that attracts butterflies, hummingbirds and this year bumblebees which is so cool I can’t even stand it. My St Francis statue stands in the middle and a birdbath is there as well. About ten feet down the line is a non-descript patch where I had pulled out out of control salvia and instead put in geraniums and some kind of bush daisy that went out of control themselves. Pulled them all out and quite frankly, the grass was moving in that direction and I am considering just letting it take over that space. Looks nice, less garden I have to try to keep happy and maybe even enough room to put up the long dormant hammock. It maybe that the sweet alyssum that thrived over there will compete with the grass and that would be ok. Also expect some spring bulbs to pop up – again ok.

Cleared out the Killer Tomato plant from the herb box and replanted all the herbs that it killed. I now know understand completely what an “indeterminate” tomato plant is and although I didn’t plant it (a gift from my gardener) I will not plant another. Also decided that catnip is not appropriate for an herb box – couldn’t believe how the roots had spread out and I practically needed a backhoe to extract it.

About this time I should mentioned that I once wrote an article for a senior newspaper about pacing oneself when gardening so as to not end up in bed recuperating for a week. I reminded myself of this and did two things of which I’m proud: I took frequent breaks and I stopped after I had pulled everything out, replanted the herb boxes, and planted some newbies in the terraced garden, even though I wanted to rake up errant leaves, clear out the area next to the garage that had plastic nursery pots and lord knows what all lurking there, including black widow spiders, and finishing turning the garden where I pulled everything up. The grass will have to wait for pretty soil, although I don’t think it will.

It felt good to get back into the garden for sure. It felt good to do it my way after secretly thinking “why are they doing it that way?” for the past couple of years. It was time and now that I’m off FB I have time.