Hiatus

Two posts in 2014.  One post in 2015.  It's been more than a year and I feel as though I left, unintentionally, without saying good-bye.

For 2014 there is no particular reason for the lack of attendance.  Maybe there was nothing to write about, nothing new in my garden experience.  Possibly it was disappointing me - the zucchini plants not so monstrous, the peas to so plentiful - and I was not feeling inspired to write or to reveal my  sense of failure.  Maybe I was too busy weeding.  They seem to get worse every year.  I had no energy left to compose.  I don't remember.

Last year was a huge change for me, as detailed in the previous post, "Fitting Things In".  Barry took over much of the responsibility for the garden.  The only relevant work I remember doing was picking about 20kg of Nanking cherries from our three bushes during the last few days of my vacation.  The lot of them went into the freezer to be dealt with later, some time when the house would be cooler.

Two weeks later, I dislocated my knee and had nothing more to do with our garden that year.  That's another story.  For the remainder of the summer, Barry tended to the garden when he got a break from tending to me.

This year he planned and planted and has done 99% of whatever else needed doing.  I pitch in with a bit of weeding and fruit-picking now and then.  It's looking grand.  Not everything is growing as we might have hoped (ahem, beets!) but he had amazing success in rearing volunteer lettuce and we had a fine Costata romanesca for supper last night.  Haskap berries, cherries, and raspberries have been wonderful.  There might be sufficient mint and parsley soon for a good tabouleh.  Grape vines cut back severely in 2014 are more lush than ever and heavy with fruit clusters.  Several crops yet to come.  Were it left up to me, the landscape would have turned to sow thistle, creeping bellflower, dill and coriander by now.

It's hard to tell whether I have lost my enthusiasm for growing food.  It's a bit difficult to get around the garden, to squat down to work at ground level, and to carry the watering cans about.  I also have less attachment to the annual plantings, not having raised them from seeds.  Hoping next year will feel different.