Gardening as therapy.

Awe, thankyou gardenartist!
Cant take credit for the sunkissed and dirtblissed phrase, that was only001!!!

I enjoy your posts as well 💜

Bella, you have a very poetic and insightful approach toward gardening and growing older. Your post is inspirational!

"sun kissed and dirt blissed"!!, love it
Need a garden sign for this for sure!

This fall, my plants remind me of aging people. While some are still blooming beautifully there are those that are showing decline. Some I have moved into the greenhouse for intense care (like nursing home), and some I have moved to a warmer spot closer to the greenhouse for a little bit more extra care (like AL). I get sad watching them slowly die and find myself reminiscing how pretty they were during the season...like flashbacks I get of my parents lives who are now in AL.
I too, can't discard a plant if it even has one bloom on it.
Lately, when I've been dead-heading to save seeds for example, I relay that to how people impact our lives... they are like seeds...there's good ones and bad ones....
Tried to explain to my husband yesterday how my mind wanders while gardening and he says yes I definitely think too much.

I usually cover as many plants that I can with sheets to protect them from the early frosts but this year I'm thinking to just let them go.😢
I get those thoughts of giving up on them...like stopping all meds, you know like, end of life stuff... like I'm putting them on hospice or something...hmm, do I just let the frost "nature" do what it does and the plant do what it does? When I think of this, I picture myself faced with the decision I may have to face some day with my parents.

For myself,  I want nature to take it's course.
 I don't want my loved ones having conflict in their mind on what to do with me. Leave me be,  sun kissed and dirt blissed, even in the frost!
If only my plants could talk  and tell me their wishes!  

Daughter, your post immediately reminded me of all the plants my mother grew and planted. She had a flora-cart, with 3 sets of trays, and they were generally pretty well filled by the time May rolled around and she could plant outside.

I remember the impatiens she grew; she really had such a knack for gardening, as did her sister who with her husband ran an alpine and bonsai nursery.

Where are you Daughter? Your winter climate sounds heavenly!
Boy oh boy, I wish for the days when you could pile in the car and head south without worrying about passports and supplemental health insurance.

Just planted violas and pansies this weekend. As they love to be cold it’s just now getting cool enough for them to be happy all winter. We rarely get snow, but years ago my mom took a picture of her pansies blooming through a light layer of snow, so pretty. They were her favorite and I never feel “right”in the fall until I have some planted.

Only, welcome to the cyber gardening community!

Yes to gardening as therapy. Even 20 minutes of deadheadimg can lift my spirits. I try to always have one raised beds for the bees and one raised bed for me. Of course the bee bed is perennials and is super low maintenance. My bed is filled with herbs and veggies. Some years it is pristinely planned and planted; some years it volunteers and I am surprised, but always it comforts me. I am sun kissed and dirt blissed.

Happy Gardening as Therapy! I’m done with gardening for this year. We are a crisp 49 degrees (high) for today. I use the mini pumpkins to decorate inside the house. Pansies are blooming outside while everything else is settling into its sleep for winter. We may hit 60 for a day or two next week, then dropping 15 degrees into the 40’s and low 50’s.

Half-and-half, Send? Plus, if you germinate them successfully for her but she then comes up with any more highly ambiguous conversation-stoppers like that one - ! - you can always change your mind and double your own spring display. And instead you can get her one of the most peculiar "plants" I've ever seen recommended, as featured on Gardeners' World last night - they went to visit one of those monomaniac collectors who go completely nuts about one species, dahlias or orchids or euphorbias or something, and end up living in the kitchen while the new seedlings nestle in the bedrooms; and in this case it was a lovely old boy who'd got hooked on - oh crumbs, I don't know, some sort of succulent.

Anywaaaaaay. I'm sorry, but this plant looked like a fossilised dog poo. Chacun à son goût and all that, I know, but that's the fact of it.

Celebrating Gardening for Therapy. For the past two days I have felt strong enough to get out and start ridding my flower beds of weeds and mulching. Tomorrow i have about 100 bulbs to plant. All daffodils because the deer eat everything else. There are chipmunks everywhere collecting the pine cones and stashing them. I was going to soak some in wax to use fore fire starters but alas there are none on the ground and I don't thing climbing trees is in my job description. Next time we have a good windstorm I will have to rush out and beat the critters to it. When i was weeding one flower bed a little mouse kept popping out from under a rock and telling me to go away as i was disturbing his work. I don't mind mice outside but not when they are rung round the living room and the cat just watches.

Sprouts had some pretty packages of seeds, so I acquired two. Attracting hummingbirds and butterflies, but need to be able to plant them out of season, because I w a n t to.

However, they would make the perfect gift for the neighbor who's husband died in the spring...just finding out now. She says to me: " I am surprised you didn't know, you know e v e r y t h i n g !" Not meaning it as a compliment I am sure.
Conflicted....gift the seeds, or plant the seeds?

There are huge spiders covering  windows! Never, never have seen that!  Scary!

And thank you, Send, for your poetic and artistic contributions, including the reminder to carve our pumpkins. It's getting cold enough now that they won't wilt as easily as they would have a week or so ago.


And thanks to everyone who's ever posted, for helping make this thread so pleasurable and relaxing, at least for me.

So, what special decorations are our AgingCare gardeners planning this year? Carving pumpkins has become an art, far from the basic and simple wide grins or menacing scowls of the days when I grew up.

And once again I'm reminded of when we were children and went across the street to a small grocery store to buy those charming little creations out of wax - lips, coke bottles....but that's all I remember of them. I do remember some kind of pumpkin candy, a soft candy that we used to love. Does this jog anyone's memory as well?

I've planned to put up a Halloween wreath I made years ago, with popsicle sticks for a fence on which a little felt black cat has perched, fall colored silk leaves, felty pumpkins and I don't remember the rest. But unfortunately, it's in hiding and I can't find it. Guess I'll have to make another one.

Grapevines should be ready for harvest now; I'll enjoy a nice lovely afternoon cutting, wetting them down, and winding them to make a batch of wreaths for the next year.

Perhaps I'll take out a mug of cider to enjoy while I'm sitting on the porch winding grapevines. Over the years I've seen some very creative applications of vines woven into arches. Someday...someday.. I'll try my hand at that.

On the subject of the harvest, does anyone have a root cellar, and is it attached to your house or your garage? I've thought of adding one to the garage; I think it would be easier than digging out next to a house. But I'll have to protect it from the critters who might want to feast on some of the contents.

Anyone see any special decorations that they'd like to share? I took Dad out about a week ago to see a yard decorated so heavily that I knew the owner wouldn't even be considering mowing the lawn until after Halloween.

In addition to the RIP signs, there "bones" stuck into the ground, a giant inflatable cat holding an equally giant pumpkin, and more of the standard Halloween RIP signs, gravestones, and more. There were literally decorations every 3 - 4 feet throughout the front yard. I've seen a lot of decorations, but this yard was just packed with them.

BTW, has anyone seen that Lowe's has had Christmas decorations for at least a few weeks? And we haven't even passed Halloween or Thanksgiving!

One is cute though; it's a large bear with movable arms. I'd like to know how someone made movable arms on a blow-up, although I haven't gotten close enough to check it out; it's more likely a mechanical bear.

I usually head for the magazines and see what the latest contributions to gardening are. The blow-ups are merely an attraction on the way to the important magazine section.


CWillie, thanks for a kind of whimsical rendering of the changes of Fall. As I read it I could envision baskets of apples, a pantry filled with home canned garden produce, a root cellar filled with apples, as well as spectacularly beautiful landscapes, and as with the poem that Send posted, the quiet period of rest and contemplation as Fall provides a respite before Winter arrives with its frigid challenges, but also the magnificently beautiful snowflakes and excuse to stay inside, huddled up with a quilt, a mug of cider or hot chocolate (or something stronger if that's your choice), and, of course, a good book or magazine to read.

Hm, the site I found it on didn't say, but he was apparently very popular in the late 1800's, and lived until 1916.

With your leave, I've just pinched it for the attention of English teacher daughter. Beats Keats into a cocked hat if you ask me.

That is absolutely gorgeous, CW - an American Rabbie Burns!

The rooster's hallylooyer. Love it! What's the date of it, please?

You've had me spending the morning reading poetry Send, here's one that caught my fancy, and seems to fit this thread:

When the Frost is on the Punkin

By James Whitcomb Riley

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock,
And the clackin’ of the guineys, and the cluckin’ of the hens,
And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;
O, it’s then’s the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best,
With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

They’s something kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here—
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees,
And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees;
But the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur’ that no painter has the colorin’ to mock—
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,
And the raspin’ of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn;
The stubble in the furries—kindo’ lonesome-like, but still
A-preachin’ sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill;
The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;
The hosses in theyr stalls below—the clover over-head!—
O, it sets my hart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!

Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps
Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps;
And your cider-makin’ ’s over, and your wimmern-folks is through
With their mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and saussage, too! ...
I don’t know how to tell it—but ef sich a thing could be
As the Angels wantin’ boardin’, and they’d call around on me—
I’d want to ’commodate ’em—all the whole-indurin’ flock—
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.

-Robert Frost (1857-1963)

Thank you Garden Artist for this special thread!

I too love cottage gardens and am in literal heaven now dreaming of gardens since I discovered an English gardening magazine. The photos are stunning.

This discovery reminded me of how much I miss Borders; I could get literally any magazine there. It was such a treasure house of reading materials.

Hollyhocks, I love them. I see them around in cottage type gardens with cosmos.

Send, the Chinese Lantern plants aren't invasive in my yard, but the cucumber beetles are, and they wiped out more than a few plants before I realized the Lanterns were attracting them.

What have become invasive are the Vinca Minors, but they're checked by the Virginia Creepers, which are also checked by a plant I can't identify. The stalk and leaves are something like Lunaria, but the flowers are white and different shaped. They spread prolifically, as do those absolutely miserable attacking plants of Black Locusts.

Those rapidly spreading monsters are like something from a science fiction movie. The thorns are sharp, close together and it's hard to handle them to cut them down and get rid of them. Of course, they come from the yard of someone who gets angry b/c my grapevines grow up on the fence on the common property line. But he won't cut down an invasive species tree.

Chinese lanterns over the years migrated up to the house, so they're far away from the garden, and hopefully stay that way.

However, over the years I've discovered that something which I can't identify is nibbling on the herbs and feeds regularly on the applemint and lemon balm.

CWillie, I think the beetles are the reason gardeners stopped planting Chinese Lanterns, although it might just be that they fell "out of favor". I think some of the "Proven Winners" are marketed so heavily that more people are buying them. Wave petunias also seem to be popular.

Other than dedicated gardeners, I don't see much about people planting the old garden favorites either - plants such as hollyhocks, which we had as children in our gardens.

CM - carefully speaking Physalis - you're a riot!

Physalis, CW; and you want to say that very carefully if you're asking at the garden centre for it.

I grew some of the annual type for fruit a couple of years back, and pretty successfully - they germinate like billy-o, but what nobody warns you about is how enormous the plants get.

And my neighbours tell me that the landlords fought a running battle with one of the perennial monsters and got rid of it. Umm, not quite they didn't - it's back, like Arnie, in a corner against a south-facing wall.

I can remember everyone planting chinese lanterns back in the 70's? as ornamental plants, I've been wondering you don't see them at all anymore.

GA,
Are all the chinese lantern plants "invasive"?
I have seen something similar, looking at online photos, what a perfect plant for fall!

I discovered a Chinese lantern plant growing close to the house; it's loaded with blooms, although some have already dried and fallen off. I may try to save the green lanterns and make wreaths with them. Leaving them on the ground allows more to start, and they attract striped cucumber beetles.

Also discovered some lovely red color in the garden this afternoon, but unfortunately it's not from a desired plant. I think it's a Virginia Creeper. I might pick the leaves for wreaths.

It’s getting to be that time of year to clean up the flowerbeds readying them for winter. I’m zone 6, basically providing coverage with shredded bark to help protect the roots for perennials. I’ll prune next year after there is no threat of freeze/frost.

Everything I have planted here at our new home, was planted as barefoots for the fall planting. When we moved here the end of June, nurseries were already on clearance sales! Oh my, so different from my zone 9a in the Central Valley of California! I ordered plants online for fall planting.

Thanks Daughterof1930. Just before winter works for me.
Or just before spring. I can do both, I think. This rose bush was left behind for me from a neighbor years ago.
My husband just snuck over a rusted old tool box, ready for the junk yard, given to him by a neighbor who just moved. We cannot have this outdoors, not allowed. He spent two hours cleaning it up. Somebody please help me! He is a hoarder! We need his time and efforts to go to maintaining what we have, and I am about to break!
Maybe, we can make room on the back porch by removing a few defunct computers, but he says No!

Something good: He found Zink, the skink in the neighbor's driveway. He is okay, but another lizard came out, Zink jumped, and went back into the bushes in our yard.
At least he is safe, still living with us. We have not seen him at all for a long time.

Waiting, waiting, Something is going to get better soon. imo.

My mother taught me all my gardening knowledge from my childhood on, and one thing I knew well from her was that if a plant but one bloom left on it, she wouldn't, couldn't pull it up! I don't think that's a gardening rule, just something my mom didn't have the heart to do. So now I have to let me annuals fully die out before I pull them, it's just ingrained in me! As for roses, I'm in the South, we cut them back in the winter, but then it rarely snows here, so it's not miserable outside to do it then.

The most beautiful and prolific gardens have the blooms pulled and discarded as I watch with my heart breaking. I do not do that, and could not bring myself to throw away blooms in the hopes of a better blooming garden LATER. I deadhead my one rose bush but after the blooms die.
Is it now time to cut back the rose bush? I used to ask the neighborhood gardener-he taught me a little-then said that my hubs and I could do our gardening, we didn't need to hire him, just before he was retiring. He passed a few years ago, after teaching me a clean, quiet way to blow the grass cuttings.
So, is this the month? Not sure which number zone I am in, but there are currently no blooms on the plant. Last seen, was a week ago.