Sometimes you need to trim plants back quite a lot to reveal their beauty, but sometimes you need to take out the plants and start over, from scratch, anew...
After spending so much time on plants, trying to get them to grow, providing them with all they need, and then cutting them down and replacing them with something different is always difficult for me.
I see the garden as a piece of art which is alive, breathing, and constantly on the "move", growing over each other, morphing into something new. I have a very minimalist and non-intefering style of gardening. I never like to take plants out, or to cut them back aggressively. This goes against the approach just mentioned. But sometimes you have to do this. And today I knew I had to get rid of the plants I tried to nurture after so many storms...
In this garden journal post, I reminisce and think through this situation, of renewal, of trimming away, of taking out... All of these ideas and words/phrases are incredibly complex, deep, and carries with them so many lessons. Or at least this is where my brain always goes when I garden. I hope that you can take something from this post, albeit just some life lessons!
But before turning to this deep and renewal-musings/reflections, the rest of my herby and leafy green garden is going strong. The Swiss chard is growing like nobody is watching it. I have cut so many leaves, making incredible dishes with it, and it seems like I am not making a dent in it.
But the Garlic chives are also on a growing streak, as the first sun after a couple of weeks (if not months) of rain, they are utilising all of the sun's rays to grow into their thick garlicky leaves.
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The intruder plants, the legumes I did not compost correct, is also growing strong, and I might even get some chickpeas or lentils from them! It will be an eye opening experience, like so many other gardening endeavours as we mindlessly buy produce such as 500 gram packs of legumes from the store, but we rarely realise just how many plants it take to produce that much food...
On the other side, the rocket is also doing good, but I guess I sowed it too late this year as the warmer temperatures are not conducive to good growth. Maybe I might still get some nice leaves before the growing season ends.
And now, the sad truth of my flower pot experiment....
At the start of this year in January I planted some seeds in flower pots, hoping to also again harvest some nice gooseberries, something that abundantly grows in my garden but which the birds and squirrels always eat. But a couple of months ago, a really bad wind storm destroyed most of these hopes and then soon after that setback another storm yet again wrecked my hopes for these plants. And today I finally took things in my hands, and I cut the plants I tried to keep alive throughout these storms down to the roots. I will not plant other things in their place.
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failed gooseberries |
Two plants grow really well from cuttings, the Cineraria maritime (I think its the plants name) and the Coleus neochilus - a very stinky plant. These plants grow so well, I usually just break a piece from the bigger plants and stick them in various open parts of the garden. In this hyperlinked post you can see just how "rooty" these plants can get, and this illustrates how easily they grow when placed in the right conditions. I have maybe a 100 or so these growing on my family's property where I have put many cuttings.
So I am taking this opportunity to fill these flower pots not with food, but with these plants and some others which I hope will easily take root and grow into these big and magical plants.
Above, you can see how the basil plants and the rocket did not really take all that well. I should admit that I did neglect them a bit due to the bad weather we were having the last couple of weeks or months. I did not go outside that much. But they needed to be cut...
It is time for some change...
And now, it is again just a waiting game, hoping that the plants will grow. Cutting things away from the garden and from your life that keeps you behind and in a dump needs to be cut away. Gardening is itself a form of therapy for me, where I listen to the birds, get my hands dirty in the soil, and where I just let my thoughts take over. Sometimes I think the most useless of thoughts - like weeds growing in a garden - but this can itself be a good thing.
In any case, I hope that you got something from this post, even though it was more musings and reflections. May your garden bless you.
All of the musings, reflections and thoughts are my own. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300.