the lazy gardener

Okay, okay, I admit it. i often start more than I can finish. It's true. That can be a problem, like when you start doing your income tax, but never finish, or start baking a cake, but neglect to take it out. But with gardening, starting is really all you have to do! It's perfect for someone like me.

We've planted perenniels in the flower garden. That's a great example of starting something, with no need to continue the effort. Mother Nature just keeps on providing~~daffodils and hyacinths, peonies and lilies, lavender and echinacea. All perenniel, and practically effortless. The lazy way to garden. Perfect, if a bit overgrown.

The vegetable patch, though, is another story. I'm so lucky that dear husband turns over the soil, weeeds it, enriches it, and creates neat little mounded rows for me to plant, complete with trellises. A lazy gardener's pleasure. Only 6 rows, it's a city garden, and it's in the front yard. Memories of Cabbagetown. We ask a lot of this little plot: it needs to be pretty to look at, neat rows of green for the veggies, and a cascading rock garden at the front, with flowers. And it needs to produce as much as possible, especially as food prices are expected to continue to rise.

Here's what's in the 10 by 10 plot this year: lavender, strawberries, scarlet runner beans, snow peas, calendula, mesclun salad greens, bunching onions, arugula, shallots, garlic and kale. Not to mention the dandelions, that are kept off-leash throughout the garden. it's exciting to think that, no matter what happens, whether we weed every week and water assiduously, or neglect it benignly(hope not), there will very likely be some veggies produced. It's pretty low maintenance. I'm so grateful for that. i love how, since it's beside the front walk, it has become a 'snacking garden'. It's easy to pluck a few snow peas or strawberries on the way out. It's great to snip a lavender bud to keep in a pocket all day.

Planting a garden, no matter how small, brings such connection with the earth, and pushes that 'gratitude' button. It's one of my very favourite things. In a week or so, we'll start watching for the first snow peas to push through, solid, if bent. A real gardener's joy, and a delight of springtime. Happy gardening, all.