Rekindling Interest in the Garden
Hello! It's been a year since I've written here...am I back?
Hello garden friends!
I have suddenly felt the desire to write about gardening again, or more precisely, to share photos from my own garden.
Garden podcasting for 8 years and writing deeply on gardening here and other places left me extremely burnt out, so much so that I didn’t even do much gardening over the last two years other than the bare minimum on a few smaller beds in our edible garden. I’ve kept up with some weeding, too, but have mostly held back on the work needed to keep things maintained.
It was all too much and I suddenly had no brain power to devote to gardening or thinking about plants in that capacity. Don’t worry, I was thinking about plants in other ways, mostly in the form of iNaturalist, hiking and botanizing, and generally as a whole through conservation. Beyond that, I didn’t really care much about gardening itself or the gardening discourse, particularly with regard to native plants. Honestly, I’ve reached the point of futility on that aspect of things and maybe I’ll elaborate on that in a future essay…or not.
I’m slowly finding my way back to the beauty of the garden at home. It doesn’t help that this has coincided with the return of hot and humid weather here in Texas. A longer, cooler spring in Texas tempted me into forgetting what things really get like around here but our typical temperatures have returned and I’m back into the thick, sweaty, middle of it all.
I’m ready to return to the beauty of the garden, the delights and surprises I’ll find each time I go out, whether it is new bloom or an insect. I know most gardeners abhor finding insect damage on their plants but I’ve moved beyond that, for the most part - damn you birds eating my blackberries! - but I find that I love looking for leaf miner tracks or caterpillar chomps or leaf cutter bee cut-outs. That means life is existing in the garden. I went out yesterday morning to throw some old vegetables from the crisper into the compost pile, where I found rat snake blending in with the shredded leaves on top of the pile. I only had enough time to run inside and tell my son so he could see and then grab my phone, but when I returned the snake had been spooked enough to slither off quickly as we got a last glimpse.
Life abounds!
I grew these snapdragon vines, more of a central and west Texas staple, from seed I collected a few years ago. I first grew them in a hanging basket but then they reseeded below the basket in the garden path and garden and so I moved some of the plants to the trellis in the edible garden where they have taken off. I still have plants coming up in the path and main garden bed and have decided to just leave them be for now. I may transplant them to another part of the garden as a groundcover because they work so well in that capacity. I love their toothy grin! How can you not be happy when you see them blooming?
The last corner I’m loving right now is this spot in the edible garden with Monarda lindheimeri, Lindheimer’s beebalm. It grows in a few localities in east-central Texas, between Navasota to Centerville, and maybe a few other sporadic locations in there. I think this plant either came from seeds we collected from the roadside or from a plant from a local plant nursery in Montgomery but I can’t recall. I threw a plant in here two years ago and this was the first year they have bloomed. I’m utterly delighted but it is clear I will be doing some thinning after this season!
When I put this newsletter on pause last June I was doing so because I was working on a hiking guidebook for the Big Thicket region of Texas. I’m still working on that. I’ve almost finished all of my hikes and then I really need to get to writing. I’ve been writing in my head and formatting things in my head, it is just time to put things down on paper. And I’ve been writing this entire last year at my primary Substack,
.I can’t say what the schedule will be like here or if there will be a formal schedule but I’d love to aim for once or twice a month to put out some kind of missive with an update from the garden or maybe eventually, some more thought provoking essays as I’ve done in the past. I’m definitely done with garden podcasting, though. The thought of putting in the kind of work I did when I was podcasting makes my skin crawl. I have no desire to research guests, write outlines, edit audio, or promote a podcast any longer. So, writing it is! And best of all, pretty photos. Because isn’t that what we all like anyways?
Hit reply to this via email or leave a comment on Substack and let me know how your garden is growing and what you are looking forward to in the growing season (or dormant season if you are in the southern hemisphere!)
Welcome back, Misty! So happy to read your latest! I’m now on year three of a hot a humid Sugar Land Garden. It’s brutal work!
I enjoyed peeking into your garden! I also think zinnia's are fabulous. Are those garden borders made of concrete? If so, such a commitment. I don't own my property so I feel tension about putting a lot into infrastructure and I do dream of a garden like yours.