Tags
Autumn in the Air, Changing Seasons, David Austin Roses, English Perennial Borders, Geraniums, Heritage Basket Studio & Chair Caning, Relaxation-Gardening Most Missed
Relaxation- Gardening Most Missed
As I sit here this morning I have been thinking how just like with Spring to Summer, now Summer to Fall, there is almost no slow transition of sliding of the seasons into on another anymore. One day it is Spring, the next it is summer, almost over night summer stopped and fall began! At least that has been the experience here in central Virginia it seems.
The one thing I have missed so much over the past 4 years even with my flower planters is getting out and tending to the flowers on a daily basis, dead heading, picking off turning leaves. This time of the fall, all of us that have flowers to tend to would be thinking how long can we get our geraniums to last until? Every year this was a goal to work towards, slowly cleaning up the pots so that we could be outside in some fashion working with what nature we have created for ourselves with container gardening.
Believe me prior to 15 years ago, I did very little container gardening, as everywhere I had lived before I was blest to have had the room and space and (great landlords) not so much the last place I lived, but that is another story. To get back on track here, I always had my version of and English perennial border, most of the time several.
My days were filled from February & March going out daily to stroll through the gardens to look at what life was coming into being, most of the time Winter Aconite , Snow Drops and Species Crocus. This is late Winter and Early Spring, I would take this time to plan on where this years dead spots were to be rearranged to make them disappear just as soon as the ground warmed up.
In short, when summer came everyday I would go out in the early morning and work with the perennials and my beloved David Austin Roses, oh I love hybrid teas, as well, though usually go for the older varieties as it seems that with hybridization that you give up scent for beauty, there are some faintly scented roses that I love, however with David Austin Roses you get the best of both worlds, for the most part strong scent, full lush blossoms and a beautiful landscape ablaze with color late spring through Autumn.
I guess the reason for this post, reminiscing about gardens past. is because lately as in most of this year, I have often asked what I do for rest and relaxation, my R&R was always working in the yard and gardens, starting the day at the crack of dawn walking through the gardens with a cup of coffee and mapping out what needs to be done, changed working on new idea’s and concepts, improving soil structure etc. Gardening was the one thing that I did everyday sometime through the day, or morning and evening.
While to most it would seem like work, for me it was just therapeutic R&R, something one day I hope to have again, as I miss it so much. For many anything that requires, movement, work, and planning are not forms of R&R, I have never been a couch potato, and if someone really wanted to torcher me (well the last several years have come pretty darn close) would be to make me be a couch potato, since there have been no gardens, container or otherwise in my life to create a diversion from life, my therapy has pretty much been non existent also, as well as NO other art work at all, I used these minor art forms as R&R, in short rest and relaxation is non existent, I miss it dearly.
Life is about birth, growth, death and ever changing colors as each goes through a life cycle, with gardening large or small it is ever changing each day of the year, just like life for us all.
When I moved I had to get rid of ALL of my gardening containers, what a sad day, it will take many hundreds of $’s the replace everything but like life and death, all things must start over as will my gardens one day.
I realize this post seems like a mish mash of writing and not keeping on track, while I am writing this post I can look back through my mind and to some degree re-live the joys and pleasures that I once experienced in all the gardens I have had, they are like your children you never forget them.
Todays pictures in this post will be a mixture of my own container gardens and David Austin Roses from the web.