January is for me a distressing month. The bright glow of the holiday season is long past. The days are now cold, dim and dreary. And the long slog through February, that most miserable of months, still lies ahead.
To cheer myself up during this trying time, I like to call up the pictures that I took of the garden the previous year. I find my spirits improve when I look back at the beauty MrsVintage and I have created with our own two hands (and sore backs).
This past year I find was especially rewarding because we replaced our rather boring front yard with a more waterwise landscape. I am looking forward to seeing the new gardens fared over the winter months.
Most times when I do a garden year in review post, I usually include the setbacks that occurred over the warmer months and my thoughts on how the garden had been ravaged by bunnies, drought, locusts and other sundry disasters. However, this past year was surprisingly problem free. Oh, sure, the bunnies did some damage to the plants in the front yard, and there are always pests such as grasshoppers to be managed. But there was nothing like what we have dealt with in years past. Even the weeds were fairly easy to manage.
Here’s hoping that a similar fate awaits in 2024.
Ups and downs…
Spring in 2023 was truly a wild ride. MrsVintage had been suggesting that I buy a snow blower for several years now. I resisted because of stubborn male pride. I am not too weak to shovel snow yet, damn it!
Then we had a massive snowstorm in April that took several days for us to dig out from. I accepted defeat and finally took MrsVintage’s advice and bought a blower. Of course, we had no measurable snow the rest of the season. In fact, it was beginning to look like the state was heading into another drought year. Our city had already implemented even stricter water restrictions than usual even before watering was necessary.
Then the deluge hit in May and June. It wasn’t quite 40 days and 40 nights of rain, but the amount of precipitation was unprecedented. Streets became impassable, golf courses went underwater, and creeks threatened to spill over their banks. Here at the Vintage ranch, we received an incredible 7″ of rain in just one storm! In all my years of living in Colorado, I had never seen anything like it.
The garden awakens…
In spite of the unpredictable spring and sodden spring weather, the garden got off to a good start. It appears that all the spring flowering bulbs made it through the winter. No mean feat! Not with rabbits and squirrels always on the lookout for an easy meal. Many bulbs apparently are a tasty mid-winter snack.
High summer and the heat is on…
Once the arduous front yard renovation was completed, my desire to work in the yard was much diminished. The heat had arrived, and my back was killing me. I strictly did maintenance tasks: mowing, weeding when necessary, and watering the newly installed landscape by hand. Otherwise, my primary chore was to just enjoy the garden, usually while lounging in my hammock.
In fact, my laisse-faire attitude was so extreme that I hardly took any photos of the yard last summer! When I started looking for pictures for this post, I was legit surprised at how few photos I had taken from July to late August.
Autumnal glory…
Once the heat began to abate in late September, I was able to get back out into the garden. I moved and divided several plants, and I removed a few plants for good. I placed marking flags to indicate where improvements need to be made in the spring. More spring flowering bulbs got planted. Tools got sharpened and oiled and stored away.
But most of all, I just reveled in the moderate temperatures and admired the autumnal glory in the Vintage Garden.
Enduring winter.
For most gardeners, winter is the season for daydreaming. I am already laying out plans for improving my garden when the warmer weather arrives. Nothing as dramatic as last year’s front yard overhaul, but subtle tweaks here and there. The garden in the real world never quite matches up with the garden in the gardener’s head. One is always fiddling around, trying to make the vision a reality. An impossible task of course. But in the words of Mr. Browning, “…a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?”.
I hope you enjoyed this reflection. Might I ask, what gets you through the bleak winter days?
