What garden?

Yesterday on an airplane high above the eastern part of this country, I was recounting the things that I was looking forward to at home: my own bed, the cats, a familiar TV remote, preparing my own meals. I realized there was something missing from that list: my garden.

This was a startling realization, as I have a bit of an obsession with my garden -- if you haven't noticed. So I started thinking about why the garden didn't make the short list of things I missed, and I think I know the answer.

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Or maybe I should say answers, plural. I'll start with the main one, which may seem a bit counterintuitive: I don't have a strong connection with it this year.

You see, although I may not have indicated it via this blog (except for the roadtrip posts), I've been traveling a lot more this growing season than I ever have before. If I look at the period from April through today, I've been away from St. Louis for seven weeks. Seven! If you add the "recovery days" -- those busy first days after a trip where you're trying to get laundry done, going through stacks of (mostly junk) mail, readjusting to time zones, figuring out what in the refrigerator needs to be dumped, then filling it back up with something that can be eaten, well, you're looking at 8 weeks at least of gardenless time.

Think about that. Two full months of prime gardening time gone. Not only couldn't I garden during those times, I couldn't even see my garden.

Any wonder that I don't feel much connection with the garden this year?

In addition, when I think about working out there (which I'll be doing this weekend) I have mixed feelings. One the one hand I'm quite excited to take a good look around, do a little bit of cleanup, some maintenance. On the other hand, there's so much to do. Mowing, digging up 'Moudry' grass seedlings, bamboo rhizome pruning, bamboo rhizome pruning, bamboo rhizome pruning, veggie bed work, pond plant thinning -- it's a bit overwhelming. That's the second reason I wasn't missing the garden: lots of work waiting.

(Let's not even mention the special projects like rebuilding the stream, which I'd hate to put off for another year, or any of the other bigger tasks from this year's project wish list.)

Now maybe all it will take for me to reconnect with the garden is a couple of days of intense exposure and nice early autumn weather, but this morning I'm still not feeling it.


Anybody else having trouble "loving" their garden right now?

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