Tenacious Tip - It's Just One Plant

I’m finally calling it quits in the garden for the season. It’s too late to dig things up and move them and all the easy weeding and mulching is done. All that’s left is to wait for the dreaded first freeze to dig up the dahlias, glads and cannas and close up the pond.

Recently, after we finished up one last project (mulching a new path), we were lounging in the sun by the pond and it struck me. There was no color left in my garden. Oh, a few late cannas are still out there, with their bright red spikes, and a few black-eyed Susans, but nothing that really jumps out. It was so surprising that I walked around and took inventory to see if my eyes were deceiving me. Here’s what I found blooming, in no particular order:

• Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ (aptly named) and other sedums
• Golden Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium ‘Aureum’)
• Some self-seeded phlox
• Black-eyed Susans
• Three-leaved Coneflower (Rudbeckia triloba)
• Echinacea ‘Pica Bella’
• Canna
• Butterfly bush, multiple varieties
• Coreopsis
• Geranium ‘Rozanne’
• Gaillardia
• Sunflowers
• Chrysanthemum ‘Matchsticks’
• Roses
• Balloon Flower
• A very few re-blooming daylilies
• Colchicum ‘Waterlily’
• Several annuals, such as marigolds, celosia and salvia

What some of these fall flowers look like (because what is a garden blog without pictures?):



Butterfly Bush with companion



Sunflower



Geranium 'Rozanne'



New Garden Path (sorry about the shadow!)

That quite a list! So what’s wrong?  It seems I have finally reaped the results of being a plant collector. My philosophy for plant purchases is usually to check my database; if the plant isn’t listed, I must have it immediately. Does it matter whether it fits in my scheme? Not in the slightest. Do I even have room for it? Who cares? It’s just one plant.

It’s just one plant.

Perhaps you’ve heard/said/thought those words. These words are the downfall of many a gardener for a couple of reasons. If you have a small garden, those words signal the beginning of a more and more desperate search for space. Before long, every available surface is covered and the gardener is resorting to step-ladders and old bookcases to pile pots on. Every vertical post has plant hangers attached in all directions. Trust me, I’ve been there!

If you have a large garden, like me, these words mean real trouble. Trouble with your garden design, trouble with maintenance and trouble in your wallet.

Regarding design, I’ve noticed a lack of coherence, a certain air of chaos, even mayhem, in some places. Now I’m also seeing spotty seasonal color. Why? Too many individual plants and not enough unity. Yes, the singular plants and flowers are very beautiful, but can I appreciate them when they are only individuals spotted around the garden? Not so much. As the designers like to harp on, they would look much better in drifts and clusters, repeated throughout the whole plot.

So my project for the winter will be to pick out some favorites that I can use to make a theme and repeat them as I am renovating other areas. They needn’t even be fall-specific flowers; every season could use a bit of harmony. For example, many of my daylilies need dividing. Instead of replanting just one clump, I could plant several; just think what a statement a large mass of Strawberry Candy would make!

Daylily 'Strawberry Candy'

I’ll have to be careful to save space for onesies and twosies, though. I don’t think I could give up my collector impulses without therapy!

Just FYI, with the season closing in, the Tuesday Tip feature is moving to a more generic When-I-Feel-Like-It Tip feature, though I'll try to keep it weekly. Sorry for the lack of entries for the past few weeks - hubby and I both came down with colds! We're both feeling much better now and back to our usual foolishness!

Tenacious Tip Tuesday - Nobody Cares Like You Do

A non-gardening tip this week, folks, and a bit of a rant. As I've mentioned in a previous post, I've been receiving cortisone shots for lower back pain. I have also been getting these shots for my left knee. The knee requires a little explanation so bear with me.

Long, long ago, when I was a little blondie of 4 years old, the doctors discovered a cyst on the back of my knee that was bad enough to require surgery. You can imagine the fun and excitement enduring knee surgery was for a four-year-old. Or for my poor mother who was a single working parent at the time, bless her. I had a grudge against doctors and a fear of needles for years.

So. These things happen. I got over it, but my knee was never right. (Yeah, I know, it was LEFT, yuk, yuk, yuk.) Other doctors said it was early on-set arthritis, take these anti-inflammatories, go easy on it, blah,blah, blah. So I did what any young person would do. Ignored it completely and played volleyball, racket ball and rock climbed. You know, ran about with tail aflame like any normal young person.

Fast forward to not very long ago. Gardening, as we all can attest, is not easy on your knees, any more than playing sports and more so in some ways. My left knee held up for a while, then went into complete revolt. About 2 years ago, a new doctor ordered x-rays and confirms, yes, your knee is very arthritic and I think you would benefit from cortisone therapy. Hence the shots. Based on x-rays as the only diagnostic - remember that.

The cortisone shots helped for a while but over this summer started wearing off after only 5 or 6 weeks, instead of 10 to 12. The doctor tells me there is not much else to be done as the shots can only be given every 3 months or they will start to damage the joint even further. Knee replacement at my relatively young age (I'm only 40-mumble) is a last resort.

I mentioned it to a co-worker recently and we start comparing knee pain. She has the exact same pain in the exact same place on the exact same knee. Huh, how strange. So what, I ask, is wrong with your knee? A torn meniscus, she says.

No shit.

Now, I'm emphatically NOT one of those people who constantly second-guesses their doctors. I trust that their training and experience are sufficiently greater than mine that any guess of mine will be just that, a guess. It occurred to me, though, upon hearing my co-worker's reply, that she has just had an MRI on her knee, a test that was never performed on mine. Well, I think, why the hell not and tell my doctor I want one.

Today I got the results of that test I insisted on. Guess what? In addition to arthritis, I have a torn meniscus, a chronically sprained ligament and no cartilage left in the joint. Oh, and another cyst. And other stuff I didn't understand and couldn't pronounce. There were 2 PAGES of results.

All of a sudden, it's not just arthritis. I realized if it had been discovered sooner, there might have been therapies that could have helped. It's so bad at this point, my doctor offered to refer me to a surgeon to make an assessment for replacement immediately.

So we come to my tip for the day. My apologies for shouting, but I'm a bit riled up at the moment.

NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR HEALTH AS MUCH AS YOU DO! BE YOUR OWN ADVOCATE!

There are a million reasons why the MRI wasn't ordered till I asked for it. I'm not interested in discussing those in this forum, but allow me to say I don't entirely blame my doctor. He could have been more thorough, true. When it comes down to it, though, I could have been a more aggressive advocate for myself and made sure all avenues were explored.

I've seen this time and again when relatives have been in the hospital. My late father-in-law was over-medicated once when he had a stroke and we only discovered it when we insisted something was wrong to the nurses. They went over his chart more carefully and, sure enough, 2 meds were prescribed that interacted and caused his symptoms.

Nobody cares like you do. Take charge of your own care if you feel your doctors are not paying enough attention.




Author's Note: I am not looking for sympathy with this post. While the news was bad, I've lived with a bad knee all my life and this was truly no more than I expected. I only hope someone out there is inspired to take charge of their own care sooner that I did and has a better result. Be good to yourselves.

Tenacious Tip Tuesday - The Roses of Autumn

I seem to be on a philosophical kick with my Tips the last few weeks. As the season ends, I have a tendancy toward melancholy and introspection. I hope you can bear with me. Today's tip is simple - be true to your gardening self, no matter what.

As you know, I've been trying to simplify my gardens to better care for myself. Many plants are being re-evaluated and some are hitting the compost heap. If I'm being honest with myself, most of my roses should be shovel pruned. Many of them are hybrid tea roses, which are notorious for disease problems and generally are the prima donnas of the garden.

This year, they have gotten no love whatsoever. No fertilizer, no spraying; they were lucky to have gotten pruned this spring (in fact, some didn't). I wrote in an earlier post that I would have to toughen up and get rid of the worst of them. The ones that survived my new Darwinian care program would stay; all others would be banished forever. I really meant it, too.

Then they go and do this:

Rose 'Playboy'

'Playboy' is one of those roses that looks fabulous when well cared for. It gets covered with those orange/yellow flowers, has glossy green leaves and stays a reasonable size. It's a blackspot nightmare when not sprayed, at least in my garden. I thought it had died over the winter and spared me the necessity of digging it out. But no, it not only recovered, it started sending out little clusters of its beautiful flowers.

Or how about this one?

Rose 'Sunstruck'

This rose is what we who grow roses call a "one-cane wonder". It literally has only one cane coming up out of the dirt. Excuse me, out of the soil. Yet, it has still managed to have at least one gorgeous flower and a few buds on it all summer. How can I rip it out when it's giving me presents like this?

So I've decided to modify my earlier, tough-love stance on my roses. They still get no special care, but if they keep blooming, I'll keep enjoying them, even if all their leaves fall off. My true gardening self simply isn't as hard-hearted as my renovation self. And I don't care! The joy I get from a single rose blossom is worth a few weeks of blackspot or Japanese beetles.

Here are some more roses currently blooming in my garden. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!



Rose 'About Face'



Rose 'Autumn Sunset'

Rose 'Chrysler Imperial'

 

Rose 'Cinnamon Spice'



Rose 'Falstaff'



Buds on Rose 'Mother of Pearl'



Tenacious Tip Tuesday - Stop and Admire the Bugs!

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent most of last Saturday pruning a ninebark shrub into shape. I finished up with plenty of daylight left, so I spent a little time wandering around to see what I could see. We've had quite the menagerie of critters this year as the flowers in the new area have really taken hold and are blooming their fool heads off.

Butterflies are one of my favorite critters to watch and photograph. There are usually 3 or 4 cabbage whites dancing around at any given moment and the odd monarch will sail grandly in and eventually wander off, in their slightly tipsy manner. Once in a while, though, the garden is graced with unusual visitors like the red-spotted purple.

Red-spotted Purple drinking from a muddy spot

Other butterflies have wandered through that I can't identify, like the 2 below. If anyone knows what they are, I'd appreciate the info! Also, if you recommend a good identification book, I'd be grateful.


Unknown black with white spots on hydrangea



Possibly a Fritallary of some sort? It was visiting the butterfly bush.

Certain plants seem to draw some insects more than others. Butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii), in addition to butterflies, also attracts its fair share of bumblebees and hummingbird moths. One odd herb I grow, mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum), only seems to attract bees and HUGE wasps. Of the wasps, 2 are particularly beautiful and, thankfully, completely non-aggressive.

Large, black wasp - it has a gorgeous blue sheen when seen in the right light



This wasp must be 3 inches long!

If you're tempted to grow this herb to attract these insects, be aware that it IS a kind of mint, with all that implies. I find it spreads more by seed than runners, but it can be a handful to contain.

Insects aren't the only flyers visiting the flowers. This year we have been blessed with not one, but 3 hummingbirds! Here in the east, we only have ruby-throated hummingbirds. They are iridescent green and the male has a magenta patch on his throat. As far as we can tell, all 3 of ours are females.

They are ridiculously difficult to photograph. The shots below were taken at a distance by either me or Brian and have been blown up and cropped to get the best view. Apologies for the blur, but you can blame the hummers!


My shot - hummer feeding on a canna lily



Another of mine



Brian's shot - he has a much better camera and was able to get the wings

So my tip for today? Don't sweat the small stuff, like getting your Tuesday Tip posted on time! Sometimes enjoying the now is way more important to your sanity and a lot more fun!


Tenacious Tip Tuesday - Be the Ants

Today was not a day I felt like doing anything much. Just coming back from a week-long vacation has done nothing for my ambition or attitude. Work seems more tedious, the people more annoying and the atmosphere more suffocating. By the time I got home, the only thing that sounded enticing was the couch.

Days like this make me want to give up on my renovations. Every time I look at my gardens, all I can see is what still needs to be done. The weeds continue to rampage unchecked. The groundhog still thumbs his little nose at us. The pond needs cleaning and the lilies never did get fertilized. It's enough to make anyone feel discouraged and it sure makes that couch look like nirvana.

Since I hurt my back this past spring, my darling, and long-suffering, spouse has taken it upon himself to load wheelbarrows with mulch for me whenever I need them. No matter what he's in the middle of, if he sees an empty wheelbarrow, he runs for the shovel, perhaps thinking I'll try it again myself if he doesn't. I tell him he needn't worry, I really did learn my lesson this time. He just rolls his eyes.

So I come home tonight, in my mood, and my Sweetie has the big wheelbarrow all loaded up and parked near the area I last cleared out and he has a big grin on his face. What could I do? I thanked him lavishly, changed my clothes and spent the evening spreading mulch.

When I started, I was just going through the motions. It seemed so little compared to the big picture. And, of course, the dandelions and oxalis had started to pop back up as we had some rain since my last foray into the weed patch.

A funny thought came to my head, though, while I was working. If you stood back a bit, it looked as though a black tide (the mulch) was sweeping through the garden. Much the way the weeds had swept through it when I was distracted by the new area. It sounds goofy, putting it down here, but it felt like I really was making headway, albeit slowly.

Did you ever read the short story "Leiningen versus the Ants" in high school? A really whacked out story about a plantation owner who tries to prevent army ants from destroying his land. I was feeling a little like the ants by the end of the evening. (I am gardener, hear me roar!)

So my tip tonight? Just do it. Every little bit helps, even if you don't see it at first.

Be the ants.

Tenacious Tips Tuesday - The Curmudgeon's Season

Author's note: Sorry this is late, folks! Been on vacation!


Nothing drives me crazier than finding a plant I love at a price I can’t afford. It’s not that I necessarily think the growers or nursery people are overcharging, either. No, growers have my complete sympathy. Introducing a new plant to the public is the result of years, literally, of work. Making the crosses, growing the seedlings and discarding the majority of them for one flaw or another, propagating enough to sell and then hoping the public agrees with your choices. Given all that, it’s a wonder anyone bothers!

For me, though, what is comes down to is I am a cheapskate at heart. I have heart palpitations at the thought of paying more than $10 for a plant. A seed pack priced at $3.50 sends me fleeing in panic. My husband says I pinch a penny so hard, Abe Lincoln is eating wheat toast (if you’re too young to remember wheat pennies, my apologies).  So what’s a curmudgeon to do?

There are, of course, a million ways to save money on plants; I’ll discuss others in future Tips. For today, let’s talk about my absolute favorite, end of season sales. Yes, yes, I know; most places are picked over or the good stuff isn’t put on sale or the plants are in hideous shape or etc. All of that is true. However, there are still some factors that make these sales worth checking out.

First, it’s shopping, for pity’s sake, for garden plants. Isn’t that enough?? At any time of year? What else is your patio for except to hold a pot ghetto? Good grief, people, I shouldn’t have to spell this one out!

Second, if you like odd stuff, really odd stuff, you’re likely to find it at a steep discount at this time of year. Certain plants may not have sold in the main season because they were too weird for the general public, whose tastes run toward marigolds and geraniums. (Are these people really gardeners, by the way? I like those plants, too, but give me some quirky sedums, fall-blooming heleniums or at the very least a few gazanias! Don’t people get bored with the same old bedding plants year after year?)



Helenium 'Double Trouble'



Helenium 'Rubinzwerg'



Tenacious Tip Tuesday - Weeding

Well, yesterday's laziness met up with Monday's busy-ness and I'm afraid this is going to be a short Tip. Since tonight's busy-ness involved weeding, let me make a few points on that activity.

First, while stubborness is a wonderful trait in gardeners, patience is also a virtue. If you have a large weeding project, wait for a soaking rain to begin it. The rain we were blessed with over the weekend ensured that the offending weeds popped right out, with the exception of some really stubborn ones (I'm looking at you, dandelions!). The ground gets nice and soft and the plants don't break off right at ground level the second you touch them.

I usually sit on the ground and dig at obnoxious weeds with my bare hands until it occurs to me that several weapons of weed destruction are sitting in a bucket not 10 feet away. I'm blond, what can I say? Which leads to my second point - use the right tools! There are 2 that I particularly like. The first is the CobraHead weeder. The thing is billed as being a large, steel fingernail and that is as good a description as any. Since they increased the handle length, you can get a really good swing behind it, increasing your destructive power. The spade shaped head is small enough to get onto tight spots and sharp enough to cut through tough roots.

The second weapon of choice is a garden cultivator I found at one of the big box hardware stores ages ago and never discovered an adequate name for. The link to Amazon calls it a Flexrake, hubby and I alternate between calling it an adze and garden whacker. It is a 2 sided hand tool; one side is a 3-pronged digging tool and the other side is like a hoe.

You cannot beat this tool for versatility and toughness. We beat the crap out of the 2 we have and not just in the garden. We took them with us to the Herkimer Diamond Mines and used them to pry apart boulders. (Great place, by the way. If you're out in the Herkimer area, check it out.) That trip we managed to bend a prong on one of them; nothing else has made a dent.

Lastly, and I've mentioned this before, alternate your technique. If you're like me, you enjoy bending over and pulling out weeds by the handful. It is easier to move around, you have more leverage and it's probably a habit. Unfortunately, it is a bad habit and can lead to back problems, especially if your enthusiastic in your tugging. Do yourself a favor and alternate standing with sitting.

I plonk right down on my butt and scoot along the ground when I'm too lazy to trot over to the garage and fetch my Scoot-n-Do. After that position becomes uncomfortable, I stand up, take a water break, then start again from a standing position. Your back will last much longer this way, though your pants might not!

OK, enough for now. Take care of yourself when you're out there!

Tenacious Tip Tuesday - Use Low Maintenance Plants

The first year I grew bee balm (Monarda didyma), a variety called ‘Raspberry Wine’, it was a fantastic success. The tiny, little plant I started with expanded politely to about a foot and a half across and stood 3 feet tall, with many lovely flowers. The leaves had a minty, spicy scent and not a speck of disease. It was a hummingbird magnet, too; every evening we could count on watching a couple of the little birds squabbling for control of the flowers.

The following year, the polite expansion continued, a little less politely. By the end of that season, the patch was four feet across and barreling over a rose and 2 daylilies. The flower stalks had grown to 4 feet tall and the nightly battle among the hummingbirds had taken on tones of a World War 2 dogfight. Scrappy little critters, those hummingbirds.

The third year began my annual battle to keep bee balm under control. After a few experiments, I decided the only way to control it was to lift the entire patch every other year first thing in the spring, cut out the old, woody growth and replant a piece from the expanding edge. This got to be a somewhat brutal affair as there was a great deal of viable plant material left at the end. I tried giving the pieces away for a while but people began to avoid me; you’d have thought I was giving away excess summer squash. I wouldn’t get around to that till August.

What I couldn’t give away got composted or at least hit the pile. There’s now a lovely patch of bee balm surrounding the compost bins and Brian mows it down when it gets too rowdy.

Every gardener has their own way of dealing with thugs. Some enjoy their rampancy, giving them their own space to pillage, some limit them to pots, and others refuse to grow them at all. A lot depends on the particular plant, too. Is it worth the effort to accommodate? Is it a major thug or just a minor hooligan? If you do let it loose in the garden, can you get it out again without high explosives?

Tenacious Tip Tuesday - Feeling Overwhelmed

The hardest part of being unable to go gonzo in the garden is watching chaos reassert itself. Knowing that weeds, insects and varmints have free reign while I’m stuck plodding along is very difficult. All the beautiful plants I spent a great deal of time and money on are slowly being overwhelmed and there is very little I can do about it. Rescuing the occasional victim, one in most imminent danger of extinction, gives a certain satisfaction but it feels awfully like fighting an incoming tide.

I made the mistake of expanding too much all at once and it has definitely caught up with me. While I was busy with the new section, the old gardens fell to wrack and ruin. Instead of bright patches of flowers, I have waving fields of grass. The roses are competing with tall stands of fleabane and Queen Anne’s lace has replaced the bee balm. The stupid, f-ing groundhog now smirks at me from under a besieged weigela.

Pardon my language. I REALLY hate that groundhog. 



A part of The Wild Zone



Reclaiming the old gardens is not going to be an easy task. It will take a lot of work that I can only do in short spurts. I’m being smart about it for a change, though, and completely finishing a section before starting another. The sections are smaller, too; no more than a few square feet at a time. Still, there are a lot of square feet to work on and some days I despair of ever finishing, especially after a visit to the untended areas. The amount of work to be done is staggering and most of it requires hard labor with a shovel, not exactly my forte anymore. The feeling of being overwhelmed is . . . well, overwhelming.

What do I do at times like that? The classic response is to flee screaming into the night, never to be seen again. Since this is impractical, I flee, sighing, to a patio in the shade and read a book. Distraction is a wonderful thing. Sticking one’s head in the proverbial sand, however, is not a long-term solution for being overwhelmed, no matter how good it feels at the time. Not to mention you run out of reading material rather quickly.

There is really only one real strategy for times when I can’t stand to look at the mess my garden has become and it is a horrible cliché. Embrace the chaos. That’s it, just embrace the chaos.

Now, mind you, this is easier said than done and there are several parts to it. First, I had to firmly remind myself that I chose to preserve my health over my garden. It’s a good choice, but all choices have consequences and a weedy, messy garden is at least temporarily the cost of this one. If I had continued to rage against it and feel put upon, I would have driven myself, and everyone around me, crazy in very short order.

So. Accept the situation with what grace you can manage. An attitude adjustment was the first step for me. I forgave myself for only being able to do so much. Perhaps that’s not so much embracing the chaos as embracing myself, but it was a necessary step.

The second part to embracing chaos for me is taking the time to observe what’s there, not just worry how to change it to suit me. Gardeners, to my mind, seem to have an eye for beauty in all its forms, but the trick is remembering to look. There are an unbelievable number of insects, birds and animals I’ve never seen before crawling, flying and oozing through the weeds. Some of them are quite intriguing and a few are surprisingly pretty when seen up close.

Not the groundhog, though. He’s ugly. And smug.

I have begun carrying my camera around with me any time I go outside, especially when touring the wild side. Butterflies are quite taken with the weeds, especially the stands of fleabane I keep meaning to rip out, and I’ve managed to get pictures of several different kinds. One very special flier, the hummingbird moth, is pictured below sampling the nectar of a balloon flower.



Hummingbird, or sphinx, moth

I’m even learning a few things as both He of the Strong Back (aka my darling spouse, Brian) and I run for the insect/bird/plant guides as soon as we spot something unknown. Did you know there is a caterpillar, called a Wavy-lined Emerald, that picks pieces off the plant and sticks them to its own body for camouflage? How cool is that? I never saw one before I slowed down to look. I may even keep a few patches of fleabane when all is said and done. It a bit like baby’s breath and looks rather nice with the daylilies.

Be gentle with yourselves, all.

Tenacious Tip Tuesday – Tools for Getting Up and Down

Garden plants, and the weeds that love them, live much closer to the ground than we do and reaching to care for them presents the gardener with a problem – bending over all the time and damaging your joints further or parking your butt on the ground and risk not getting up again. In the old days, one might carry a walking stick or staff to help lever oneself up from a sitting position but this is not always a convenient solution. What happens if you’ve wandered away from your prop? It’s a dilemma.

While I am not an old-fashioned person, I am a practical one and any device that allows me to keep working in the garden is a welcome one. I do actually have a staff of sorts to help with the ups and downs of gardening life. It’s a ski pole that someone left next to the old fire pit when we first bought our house and, from the blackened tip, I presume it was used as a poker. With the loop on the end and the strength of the metal, though, it makes a superior walking stick and lever. The sharp point also makes it handy for marking out new beds.

Ski Pole, minus the snow guard at the bottom

Unfortunately, there are times when a simple staff is not enough to get my backside off the ground. At times like that, I rely on an odd device that functions as both a kneeler and a seat, depending on which side is up. As a kneeler, the 2 sides stick up, giving you sturdy braces to pull yourself upright. Fortunately, while I have a bad back and bad left knee, there is nothing wrong with my upper body strength and those uprights are all I need to get vertical.

Levering myself up with the kneeler

You can also flip it over and use it for a seat. The wide sides that helped you get up also provide sturdy and stable legs for sitting on. I like to use this for pruning taller plants and shrubs; bending over just slightly is actually more painful than bending all the way to the ground. With this seat, I don’t have to bend at all.

The kneeler/seat usually runs around $35 to $50 at most of the sites I checked.

The kneeler as a seat

For folks who may have difficulty with upper body strength and have limited leg strength, it might be best not to get down on the ground at all. I certainly have days like that and the kneeler above can be very helpful when I just want to work at sitting level. However, it’s too high to do serious weeding or planting, unless you are working in waist-level raised beds. To work closer to the ground, I count on my Scoot-n-Do.



Scoot-n-Do



I bought this many, many moons ago and in all that time it has only taken minor damage, despite being dropped from pickup trucks and wheelbarrows onto every surface imaginable. It features a nicely padded seat, roomy carry space under the seat for small tools, and space next to the seat for larger items. There is even a cup holder for the beverage of your choice. I recommend a nice, frosty . . . root beer.

There are several versions of the Scoot-n-Do on the market, many now made of metal with swiveling seats and pump up tires, instead of the very sturdy plastic of my model. I’m not sure you can even get the plastic version anymore (I wasn’t able to find it, but your Google-fu may be better than mine). The metal ones run from $80 to $130, depending on the features you add on – detachable baskets, seat pads, etc.

These are the particular items I count on to go from vertical to horizontal and back again. How about you folks? Any other devices you care to mention?

Tenacious Tip Tuesday – Change Activities Every 20 to 30 Minutes

As a confirmed Virgo, I almost cannot function in the garden without lists. Lists of plants, lists of plants longed for, lists of ideas for neat color combinations, lists of color combos never to be repeated, lists of things to do, lists of things to ask someone else to do, etc., etc. Nothing is more satisfying to me than having a list with lots of little check marks all over it; I really feel as though I’ve accomplished something.



A sample of some of my lists

One legal-sized notepad is dedicated to an ongoing list of everything I can think of that needs to be done in the garden, no matter how huge or how minor. The first page says “Master List of Things To Do”. One entry is to fertilize the lilies in the pond, the next is to redesign the bed with the apple tree and the one after that is to divide the helenium in bed #2. There is no rhyme or reason, just a free-flow of things to do. As an item is completed, it gets checked off and the date entered next to it.

I first made this list purely because my anal-retentive Virgo-ness forced me into it. Also, it was somehow very comforting to see that, despite the huge amount of work to be done, it was finite. There was a beginning and an end, see? Right there on the page(s)! That I kept adding to the list was beside the point. The goalposts kept moving, but consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds anyway. Or something.

Anyway, I read a tip a few months ago about switching activities every little while when you garden to help protect your joints and muscles from over-use, especially for people with back problems or arthritis. Every 20 to 30 minutes, they said, take a 5 minute break, then switch to an new activity which uses a different set of muscles. Repeat.

That certainly seemed reasonable so I tried it. Weeding is an endless task, so I chose the next bed in line and started with that. After crawling about, flinging greenery, for a half hour or so, I got up (creaking a bit), got a drink and grabbed my pruning shears.  Rolled around on my Scoot-n-Do, pruning roses for a bit then went to transplant an over-shaded daylily. Hey, isn’t that daylily one of the items from my Master List of Things To Do! Why, yes, it is! Cool, check that little bugger off. What’s next? Let’s see . . . weed out section 5. Already started that - may finish it today. Awesome – another check mark!

As the day went by (and it went quicker than usual), I found switching out not only helped my back, but it felt like I was getting more done without burning out on a given task. Yeah, blasting through an entire bed and weeding the whole thing is satisfying, in its way, but you can’t move the next day and nothing else gets done. And all those little check marks made my Virgo self very happy.

So there are 2 tips for the price of one: switch activities regularly and keep a master list to give you other activities to switch to!