Summer Gardening

Summer usually brings with it an unquenchable fever for gardening and all sorts of landscaping activities. This year, though, I have barely mowed the lawn. What gives?

My thought is that the bizarre weather has messed with my internal clock. It is mid-May and we still have cool rains falling. We haven’t had a sunny day in weeks. It still feels like we are breaking out of a late winter even though we are long into the early summer already. There don’t seem to be any natural events going on outside to trigger my gardening instincts. I need a gardening trigger stimulus!

This week, I know I do need to cut back the tulip and daffodil shoots. I need to get some annuals for the beds. But what about the mulch, the worm castings, the tomato planters, the endless seedlings. And jiffy mix?  Those i’ve usually been through with a month ago. My back deck is usually a tropical jungle of herbs, vegetables, & flowers by now. Instead it is a barren of last fall’s empty marigold pots which the dog has taken for abandoned and now pees on.

But for the summer rose bushes exploding all over town in front of homes and businesses, I’d have forgotten to plant altogether.

Those summer roses, bless them. Oddly, I think they are blooming so heartily because of the constant drizzle throughout these many long, cool, shady days.

I guess the garden has some lessons to teach me. Even if they are other people’s gardens, other people’s roses, I should remember to think if the better things that can come out of unusual circumstances.