Felder's Garden Reset

Time to face reality: There are hard decisions ahead, as I head home from a summer overseas, expecting to walk into a partially browned-out wasteland of plants left to fend for themselves. Most will be fine, but it's time for Grumpy to lose some of his most troublesome.

As I enter the period when even the most able folks naturally start to age out of heavy chores, I do not expect my garden to remain the same; much less continue to expand with every plant that catches my fancy. I'm beginning to relax, savor what I most cherish, with less effort.

So, against my natural inclinations, I am decluttering. Just like cleaning out the tool shed and garage, I'm getting rid of some redundant, high-maintenance plants and even some of the yard art. Do I really need THAT many nandinas, roses, and bottle trees to be happy?

This is nothing new; my English wife and I go through this mindful process twice a year, as we go back and forth, alternating seasons in different climates. For the most part, in both worlds we have settled on proven self-reliant plants that thrive on little or no watering, pest control, or pruning. And there are plenty to choose from; for inspiration, just drive around any older part of town and pay attention to the trees, shrubs, groundcovers, and perennial flowers that have survived for years without being babied.

Still, Susan and I steel ourselves for what awaits us in our all-summer neglected garden. While most of our neighbors have simply paid someone to regularly mow, edge, and blow the lawn, and trim overgrown shrubs, our somewhat busy cottage style Mississippi garden will need a more knowing touch.

After wandering around taking note of what needs doing, we typically get down to a hard half or more leisurely whole day of picking up fallen branches, sweeping path-blocking spider webs, blowing the walks and decks clear, clipping wayward stems of gangly shrubs and vines, string-trimming and hand-pulling weeds, dragging the debris to our long, somewhat neat "dead hedge" which doubles as a wildlife habitat, and laying fresh mulch.

Whew! Maybe take another day to finish. We still need to rework the handful of flower beds and large container gardens, and rake spent flowers, vegetables, and fallen leaves onto one end of our linear compost pile. After sifting finished compost from the other end, we fork it into the bare areas, then head to various garden centers to mull what we think will carry us through the next couple of seasons.

That's pretty much it. Oh, there are routine chores, like pressure-washing paved walks, checking the night lighting, repairing or staining steps or deck boards in need of attention. Clean debris from roof gutters and the two water gardens, refill the big bird baths. Maybe wash the windows looking out over our little Eden.

All this is routine for most hands-on gardeners, though other than having the leaf blower and string trimmer tuned up professionally, and occasionally renting a chain saw for removing large shrubs, we don't have power equipment to tend to. No lawn mower because there is no lawn, no tiller because we just use a turning fork in the few beds, I have gradually made smaller for less digging, mulching, weeding, and replacement flower expense. Besides, we feed our worms, so Nature does most of the digging for us.

Then we'll have family and reconnected friends over, ease our bones on the deck swing in the cooling evenings, reminisce over what's gone, and cherish what we have instead of wishing for more.