This last week of spring has seen the garden ease into a more consistent style, as the ephemerals of early spring have mostly faded away in their entirety, as if they were never even here in the first place. It’s startling how quickly they go when the heat hits. And startling how quickly they depart from memory as well, especially as other plants come into their own. The shifts and gradations of a garden in June can be extreme, so I welcome the bit of consistency that regular heat and sun will bring.
We were lucky to have had some torrential downpours in the night, as the ground was in dire need of a deep watering. I set the scene, fortuitously fertilizing and watering a bit in the afternoon before the rain arrived, allowing water to soak in before the deluge so it wouldn’t just run off.
Successful gardening is largely about timing, and reading signs of what a plant wants, and when it needs it. There’s also a bit of luck involved, particularly when we have just so much control over the weather and environment of a garden. We can water all we want; during periods of drought though, it’s often never enough. We rely on the rain. And the sun. And while we can water, we have no way of adding sunlight to the mix – we are at the mercy of the sky and cloud cover.
Gardening is work. Hard work. Sometimes guess work. Always good work.
