Garden walkabout.

Did my first real garden walkabout today.

Pretty late in the season, I know.

I've been dealing with Dad issues over the last few weeks, and the week before that we had family in town. Besides, my garden for whatever reason seems to run a full month behind everyone else's garden. Though the weeds are certainly flourishing.

This year I was intending to be more of maintenance year. Last year I spent quite a bit of time clearing away space, and buying plants.

I'm not terribly happy with how the plants I bought have done. But that is kind of the point. My intention is to have enough variety of plants that I can pick from the survivors which flowers to subdivide and plant elsewhere. (Instead, I suppose, of trying the fix the soil so that the plants that don't survive will do better...)

I think I'm going to give everything another week or two to come up, before I decide what to save and what to spread. Maybe do some weed pulling, and the lawn will need to be mowed soon. I'd really like to get it fertilized this year -- I meant to last year, but I never seemed to have that nice 3 day stretch where I could spread the fertilizer and let it set in. Temperatures have to be at a certain temp and there can't be any rain. Just never seemed to have the right 3 days.

I think this will be a more leisurely year for gardening. Just kind of duffer around the garden.

Gardening and writing are a fine combination, too. I can mull the story, and if anything occurs to me, I can walk over to the patio and use my laptop. I'm really looking forward to it.

I suppose I may get started this afternoon, despite the cool temperatures.