A reflection on the garden of 2014

This Thanksgiving weekend I was thankful to have my husband at home so that we could tag team watching the baby and working on cleaning up our yard!  It's been so busy with Ari that it has literally been impossible for me to do any work outside since he was born at the beginning of September.  I really am lucky if I can keep up with laundry and dish washing!  

The weather was absolutely beautiful this weekend and perfect for getting out and pulling out the garden to prepare it for winter.  As always, the annual fall clean up brings with it a reflection of the good, the bad and the ugly in the garden of 2014.  Has anything changed since last year?

 

It was somewhat bittersweet to yank out plants that were still in full bloom, but I knew that I wouldn't get another opportunity to do it before the weather turns cold and the dreaded snow begins to fall.  I cut the last bouquet of flowers, a handful of colourful snapdragons, before beginning my descend on the garden.

 

 

What I loved about my garden this year:

• My raised "lasagna" garden beds for the kitchen garden.  I didn't even need to add any layers this year as the compost from 2013 was perfectly ripe for planting.
• The colourful snapdragons and zinnias I planted - they made for beautiful cut bouquets all summer long.
• My front yard perennial bed was essentially maintenance free - perfect for an eight to nine month pregnant lady to take care of!
• The patio.  We enjoyed many evening dinners outside all summer long...right to the day I went into the hospital on September 3rd!
• Annuals that brighten up spots in the garden.  Begonias, fuschia, impations and geraniums are some of my favourites.
• I filled in some bare spots in my front perennial garden with two spirea shrubs that I picked up for a great deal at Costco.  

Some things that I didn't like about my garden this year:

• Those ants are STILL a nuisance in the garden and they are gathering more ground.  This year they were crawling all over my cosmos and ended up killing half the plants by the end of summer.  Grrrrr.  I had bought some ant-killer, but wasn't able to use it as exposure to insecticide is a no-no when pregnant.  Will have to try next year!
• I stopped doing my watering and weeding chores around August long weekend, when I was 37 weeks pregnant and feeling far too uncomfortable to manage the gardening work.  Surprisingly most plants survived well into September, even though they were neglected!
• I didn't use a lot of the herbs and vegetables that I planted in the kitchen garden.  Maybe it was because I was pregnant and lazy, but a lot of things went to waste.  Some plants didn't even produce (jalapenos and butternut squash).  We did make good use of the lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes.

 

This blog is about both my joys and my follies in gardening.

Much of what we learn is through making mistakes, and I have to say that I enjoy trying new and different things every year...even if they don't turn out.  That really is the joy in gardening.  This year the big challenge was gardening during the third trimester of pregnancy...next year it will be working with a nearly one year old little boy in the mix!

 

Until next year, garden.

All photos taken by me in my 2014 garden.