It's become clear to me through posts and PMs that there are some gardeners here just waiting for the chance to discuss gardening!
So, I was thinking... how do you use gardening, or how does it affect you if you need a break, need some respite, need to relax, need inspiration....how do you use it as a therapy tool in caregiving?
What are your activities: Do you go out and pull weeds, read a magazine, design new beds? Look through garden catalogues? Go to garden stores?
And what interests have you added to your gardening? Visit estate or garden displays? Do you go to garden shows?
Does anyone design and plant Knot Gardens? Raised bed planters? Assistive gardens? Pollinator gardens (and have you thought of ways to help the bees and butterflies?)
Are your gardens primarily for pleasure or food, or a mix of both? Do you grow plants for medicinal purposes? Which ones, how do you harvest and process them? Any suggestions?
Do you grow plants that can be used in crafts, such as grapevines for wreaths and lavender for lavender wands? Do you make herbal products such as creams, lotions, chapstick?
What else can you share about gardening and the means in which it nurtures your soul?
Really grateful for the only 'gardener' left, my hubs. He hand prunes things. ❤️️
This is when your loved one has started to butcher the plants in the yard and garden, thinking they are 'gardening'.
Is there a theme to 'this', I am wondering. Maybe the decorative apple tree was cut on one side only, and died being over pruned on that side? Literally, there is a one-sided decorative apple tree. 😒 Today, the prolific cape honeysuckle was cut. A hole, the size of a man standing in it, cutting, cutting, cutting. Until I rescued it, asked hubs to stop, please stop, there goes my privacy from the street to the front porch.....STOP! 😲 I don't like seeing just the branches.
But the sadness is not from the lop-sided gardening. It is from, what is happening to my dH, why is he doing this, what will become of him, what can I do to help his cognitive status and the resulting behaviors?
Feeling like, my garden will be okay looking like an "Alice in Wonderland" sort of place. Only half there. I can decorate accordingly with figurines maybe. Yellow painted rocks with red dots? A brightly colored scare-crow holding a pitch fork dressed as my hubs? Zink the skink habitats, and lizards names painted on their tiny homes, lizzy, lizardo, lizabeth..... Then, labeling the swamp of sadness, the desert of dreams, the mountains of forgetfulness.
Sad. 🥀
roses https://www.facebook.com/emjo2002/posts/10156924275381442?notif_id=1592880910077656¬if_t=feedback_reaction_generic
japanese anemones
https://www.facebook.com/emjo2002/posts/10156922725716442?notif_id=1592847031552206¬if_t=feedback_reaction_generic
🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩
On the plus side I've been harvesting lettuce and I plan to stir fry beet tops and my broccoli thingies tonight for supper, so at least there's that.
my tomatoes look good this year and have set fruit. I have spinach and lettuce in a couple pots in a shady area and keeping them well watered. What’s great is they haven’t bolted from heat yet. I may have found the right spot to grow greens.
total aside...my woad plants are doing well in pots this year. I’ve been able to harvest enough leaves to extract enough blue dye to dye yarn a light to mid range blue. Woad is a form of indigo. The sweat bees are loving the coreopsis and lavender blossoms.
Losing an evergreen is upsetting though; to me they're very special trees.
The grass really needed a good soaking!🛀🛀🚿🚿🚿
On the bright side, some of the cornflower seed I just tossed into the yard are coming up. Quite nice.🌿
Sometimes I don't know why I even bother.