So far this morning, I have mixed sugar water food for the bees, consisting of 1 gallon of water heated, and 1 gallon of white sugar. This is now cooling on the stove. I trimmed back a section of our run-away wisteria. Makes me think of a silly movie from my childhood called The Triffids, about a plant that was taking over the world. Also trimmed a section of the prolific ivy that grows up our pond side porch and threatens to encroach upon our deck. Now I am headed out to weed another section of my upper garden bed. If it does not rain, I will most likely spend a couple of hours on this project.
As I worked on pulling out the entanglement of roots from my soil, I began to be aware that my soil is beautiful, rich, and dark in color. Once all surface spreading roots of mint and some other prevalent weed were removed my soil was soft and easy to work. And I felt the satisfaction of this reward of nice soil from sporadic efforts I have made over the last thirty plus years to garden here. Some years I had added collections of fall leaves, pine needles, and manure shoveled from a neighbor's barn. Sometimes I added bags of dirt or mulch purchased from town and one time I bought a tandem load of mulch made from sludge which came from the Bristol Waste Water Plant where I worked as a Waste Water operator for almost 3 years. Some of this wonderful mulch was added to my garden bed and happily, I still have a pile of that mulch available. I wonder if it is still rich eight years later and how I would determine the answer to that. The result of all that effort is that what was once hard red clay type dirt is now wonderful rich soil. The new career on which I embark has been developing over many years.
This is my soil today after I removed lots of weeds and their roots. The stalks are asparagus.
Here is the tangle of roots I am working on removing.
The is where our big dog, a Great Pyrenes, dug our a place in the grass to lounge in and keep himself cool. It is the type of hard clay my garden bed had when I first started to use it,
I find as I work in at my gardening, my mind is busy enjoying thoughts of the so called past, present, and future. I think about what I want to include in this blog. I think about why I write this blog and who I write it for. Obviously, I write it for myself, but perhaps it evolves, I will have readers who share with whom I have common connections. I think this blog really have two themes that intersect. One is transitioning from "work" to "retirement". The other is gardening, simply because it is a huge factor in my own transition. It gives me purpose and glad anticipation. I transforms the idea of retirement into the excitement of a new career, a new frontier. There are most certainly as many ways to prepare for "retirement" as there are people who retire. Sharing our experiences is uplifting and rewarding.
Today I researched and printed articles about caring for peonies. I then clipped the old peony stems and discarded them on my burn pile. Google searches readily provide answers to probably any gardening question one could imagine, so I will not attempt to link to where I get my information. I watched a couple of You Tube videos on the subject and found several printable articles. Most of the information was the same from all sources and all of it was compatible making me feel confident I was getting pretty useful information about caring for what is already growing in my garden spaces.
My weekend is waning and Monday morning will be here soon where I will go back to my day job for 13 more weeks consisting about 50 more work days. My old career is waning and my new one has already captured my heart! And by the way, I have already changed my mind and have made this blog public and available to searches.
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