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From
the Editor Procrastination is easy if you have a home to maintain and a garden or two that needs tending. You might get an idea what I mean if you peruse Trying to be greener or From simple garden to estate. Sometimes I think on-line material gets a bit taken for granted. It's there, not always accurate, it's free and you forget the individual or individuals behind the material may have a life outside their website or blog. In the days when I was paid to be a garden editor I wrote about gardening, but I didn't get to garden. I had to rely on my horticultural education, reading books and talking to people who did garden. I didn't get hands on experience where you can really learn something. Even garden shows on television can be very misleading. Time is compressed, advertisements squeezed into the 30 or 60 minute show. Gardening shouldn't be about how fast the plants mature. You have to learn to enjoy getting there. Until you've composted a few kitchen scraps from the kitchen you don't realize how quickly those scraps can decompose in a warm moist heap of invisible organisms. You may imagine the steam coming off a hot compost pile when you turn it over on a cold morning in January by writing about it, but you sure can't feel the heat. You need to get your shovel into it, so you can begin to appreciate some of the wonders of nature. There's something unique about sitting or standing in a garden without intrusive noise of passing cars, flying airplanes and human voices. Sitting quietly and watching for the slightest movement whether it's a spiny lizard jumping into the air to haul down a Tecoma Sunrise flower or a lesser gold finch digging away at a zinnia flower to get the seeds can be pretty fascinating if you've never witnessed such a thing. The past ten years or so I've done a lot of gardening. Some of the results I've shared on the pages of the Tucson Gardener. I think my garden became sort of a testing ground with lots of successes and plenty of failures, too. I didn't share all the failures because there were probably more than just a few and it was easier to hide them in the compost bins. Okay, I've somewhat explained myself for 2007. I apologize to any gardener that came back once or twice over the past nine months to see if there was something new to read and there wasn't. I'm attempting to cut back on the gardening a bit for the coming year. I can do it, I just don't know for how long. ̶ The Tucson Gardener (10/07) |
I pulled my hair out
every time I thought about creating new material for
The Tucson Gardener.
Usually there's a spring issue for gardeners anxious to put something in the
ground or get an idea or two for their Tucson garden. It's not that I didn't
have article ideas. Maybe there were too many and I couldn't choose which
ones to pursue. Shame on me for not putting something together sooner but it
seemed like I always had something else to do.