Blunder Woman: Ambition Exceeds Ability

If there's one trait I don't like to acknowledge in myself it's laziness. It's there, though, and every time I stand in the back yard staring out at the burgeoning weeds I sigh and think "that's going to take forever to fix up". Sometimes I grab my gardening gloves and trudge out there to deal with some of it anyway, but... sometimes I go inside and sit in front of the tv with my knitting instead. And if there's one thing I've learned in the months since my last Blunder Woman admissions it's that I have way more ideas than dedication to following through on them.

It's time to fess up on what didn't work this winter.

Primarily: the weeds. Some of them are nearly as tall as I am, especially in the corners that are hard to get to and, as you can see above, beneath the roses. My thoughts that the chickens could make a dent in those were apparently sadly misguided. It probably doesn't help that their favourite place to hang out is at the back, by the fence - where there's a patch of open dirt to scratch in.

I think if you want your chickens to help you clear a mess like this you need more than two of them. I'm going to have to get in there and deal with this myself. At some point.

While opinions seem to be divided about the actual, tangible benefits of companion planting in such a small scale, I'm still a fan of the bright, cheerful flowers of marigolds. Since I didn't read about how easily they regrow from old flower heads until after I'd cleaned out the old plants I had to buy new ones again this year, and just a few days after planting out my punnet of six baby marigold plants... four of them look like this.

I have no idea what happened to them. Mostly the leaves and flowers are completely gone - I guess something ate them? I'm really sad, though, and wary about planting in more that may just end up facing the same fate.

This is one of my two cauliflower plants (the other one is identically barren). Is it the wrong season for caulis? I could have sworn that brassicas were a winter plant and the broccoli seemed to be perfectly happy. I did know going into it that they weren't a very easy thing to grow and at least I should be grateful that they weren't totally eaten up by caterpillars or anything, but it's still disappointing to see it going nowhere. Does it still have more growing to do, or is this one going nowhere? I may have to give up on it if there's no progress by the time I need to plant out the tomatoes.

When I pruned the roses I brought in the last of the flowers as I went and stuck them in a vase on the table. They were a messy bunch, not the sort you'd deliberately cut to bring in if you had options - misshapen, on awkwardly twisted stems. Still, they were pretty. As time went on and the petals dropped off the laundry piled up on the table around them (we tend to use the dining table only when we have guests - and in the meantime it's a great laundry folding station). When I finally cleared things off and got the house cleaned up I noticed that the long-presumed-dead rose cuttings had shoots growing on them.

If a bunch of cuttings in water could grow, surely they could, in a pot with sun and water and soil, actually grow!

This is not actually true. Within a week or so of being planted the cuttings have been dying off. The leaves have wilted and the whole thing looks very sad. Apparently there are ways to grow roses from cuttings but it involves actual effort and not just shoving them into some dirt. Who knew.

The biggest fail of the season, really, is how little I've done outside. The rain has been a great deterrent and we had so many storms that I found myself unable to face the thought of getting out in the drizzle on my days off. The garden remains un-mulched, the weeds remain un-pulled, and the spring seeds remain un-planted. I hope the sun comes out soon and I can kick my butt back into gear!