YORKTON - Do you have a calendar close by?
Here’s a date to mark down: the Yorkton and District Horticultural Society will be holding their annual Fruit, Flower and Vegetable Show on Wednesday, August 7 from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM at the Parkland Mall in Yorkton. Everyone is invited to come and see interesting displays of vegetables, fruits, flowers, houseplants, and flower arrangements. Our feature flower this year is the beloved and beautiful geranium, so there will be a special section dedicated to this favourite plant. Everyone is welcome! Join us and bring a friend, there is no admission.
Now, garden coffee chat. I read in a fine gardening book by an expert gardener that we, as gardeners, should be able to leave our gardens for a few days without a major problem. This statement was made in reference to choosing drought resistant plants, one of my favourite plant topics, but it brought to mind another garden-work question.
Is our garden working for us, or are we working for our garden?
Okay, first to clarify. As gardeners, we all know that gardens require work and care to be productive and beautiful, and we are all willing to put in the necessary time and muscle-power to make that happen. In life and in gardens, nothing beautiful will happen without work and attention. We probably all agree on that point.
But there may come a time, for a variety of reasons, where we are working for our gardens more than they are working for us. What reasons, you may ask? All kinds of reasons that include things like lack of time, physical limitations, age, health issues, and even reasons like the kids leaving home and a couple is now cooking for two and not for five. Do we come in at the end of a gardening day feeling ‘happy tired’ as my Mom always used to say, or are we just dead-tired because we can’t keep up?
I think we all know gardeners who grow a HUGE garden, (because ‘we’ve always done that’) but don’t have the energy to weed it all, don’t need all the produce, are trying to find people who will take some of it, and perhaps have reached a stage of life when they might pursue other interests. Tried and true gardeners might say what could be better than gardening?! But things change, and maybe new interests now lie in spending time with grandkids or travel or spending a bit more time warming up a lawn chair in the shade.
Younger gardeners with careers and kids may not have time to care for a huge garden, and might feel pressured into having one just because it’s expected. Make the garden work for you by planting what you can reasonably manage, and also planting your most favourite things that you know you will use for family meals. That might mean you plant only onions, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots and beans. In small gardens, potatoes might take up too much valuable real-estate, or maybe you’d rather have potatoes than anything else. The choice is up to you, but at least your garden work will be going towards what you will enjoy.
So, to answer the question: we should keep gardening, or course…but we have to find a balance between time in the garden, the mindful choice of planting what we can use and enjoy, and the enjoyment that the garden brings to us. Sometimes planting more mindfully might make the difference between gardening being a joy or gardening being a chore.
Plant wisely, but by all means, keep growing, gardeners!
Thank you to our friends at YTW for their great work in all weather! Visit the Yorkton hort society at www.yorktonhort.ca and have a fine week!
