Thursday, December 31, 2009

Happy New Year: what will you do differently this year?

Happy New Year! It is a special one this time around, a full moon, a blue moon, and it only comes around every 19 years on this day/night. Reflective time, this New Year's Eve. This is the day I review my garden journal. I can't be disciplined enough to maintain a personal journal, to log my success, failure, torments and triumphs, but I can do it for the garden, meticulously. In many ways it reflects how I feel personally as well. You know, sometimes there is just too dang much of something when you are sick of it (zucchinis in August or a particularly irritating co-worker) or not enough of something you feel you really need (Brussel's sprouts or vacation time for example). Personal triumphs are like harvesting your first head of cauliflower, or managing to fend off the tomato blight long enough to get sort of sick of tomatoes. The garden, for those of us who are affected with "gardenitis" (the gardening sickness, that causes lawns everywhere to recoil in fear of getting turned under), the garden is not only our respite and meditation, it also has the capacity to harbor the bane of our existance (imported cabbage worms, yucky!).

So, what will I do differently this year:
I will not be signing up for the same old thing! Change will come and I will like it!
I will NOT overplant the beds so they become these uncontrollable, tangled, mongrel children wrecking    havoc on my harvesting and sense of order!
I will police the pest situation with more vigilance.
I will plant turnips, because I love them.
I will spend more time enjoying the rock chair I built in the garden 2 summers ago and have yet to use for it's intended purpose (drinking an ice cold beer after a great day working in the garden).

Looking over my list, it seems pretty manageable. What is in your personal journal you would like to take out to the garden? What is in your garden journal you would like to bring into yourself? What will you do differently?