Garden Blogger's Death Day :: December 2009 :: The Wrap Up

Ding, Ding, Ding… bring out your dead!

 

Welcome to Garden Blogger's Death Day for the final month of 2009! This is the day for gardeners who overwater, underwater, maim, prune or otherwise neglect their plants to a state of dismal droopage or untimely death. This is the day for gardeners like me with black thumbs who kill more than they cultivate, for cadmium-green-thumbed gardeners who have a lapse in judgment and commit accidental planticide, and for any poor soul whose plants fall victim to that fickle mother who controls us all - Mother Nature.

 

 

I had grand plans of posting a wonderful Year in Review wrap-up story about what's lived and what's died in my garden in 2009, along with photos of the current state of things, but it just didn't work out. Between the new puppy, family in town, Farmer B off work, the boys off school and everything else involved in the holidays I just plain ran out of time to sit at the computer. But at 9 pm on New Year's Eve I am squeezing in a quick wrap-up before the year ends.

 

I know that this year brought some great changes to our household and it's amazing to think about how much life has changed in 12 months.

 

In January 2009:

 

• I had a beloved dog called Baillan who was happy living out her golden years on a rumpled burgundy bed on the corner.
• I had fantasies of owning chickens, but thought people who actually did own chickens were a little bit weird.
• I had a 468 square foot vegetable garden that wasn't doing especially well and I was considering giving it all up.
• I had two little boys who were facing their 3rd and 5th birthdays and asking all sorts of questions about preschool and "real school"
• I actually didn't blog for the entire month of January 2009 - my first break from blogging, and from gardening for that matter.
• My confidence level with gardening was about a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10 and we had barely had anything worth harvesting.

 

A year later, December 2009:

 

• That beloved dog has passed, but a new little puppy has bounded into my life and is reminding me constantly of my old best friend.
• I actually own my own hens and have come to enjoy chicken ownership, all things egg-related, and spending too much time on the Backyard Chicken Forum.
• The 468 square foot vegetable garden is gone and in it's place are two raised bed square-foot gardens.
• My two little boys are now facing their 4th and 6th birthdays and each has a year of preschool and "real school" under their belts. They've grown up so much in the past year and I'm having one of those "where did my babies go?" moments.
• My confidence level with gardening is now about a 3.5 on the 1 to 10 scale and we've actually eaten all sorts of meals from the garden including some awesome leek soups and quiches!
• I have found that gardening and blogging are two of my favorite things and I have no intention of giving up either, no matter how unskilled I may be.

 

So although my final post of the year was anticlimactic, the year wasn't. It was a great year with lots of change, plenty of death, but lots of new life and growth too. I'm looking forward to a new year of family, pets, planting, blogging and reading about the gardening lives of my garden blogger friends around the country.

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!