This made me laugh. Every year I am planting , digging things up replanting or moving things around and I say this year I'm done and next year I'm going to be able to sit back and enjoy it and just do weeding. Then comes next year and it starts all over again. I swear I don't thing I ever planted something that stayed in one spot for more than one summer. It's either to tall to short or diseased or I just don't like it there. It's getting to the point my backyard birds consider me to be a perch to land on.

I definitely didn't spend enough time in the gardens this year. They have gotten away from me this summer. Now I'm overwhelmed. In the spring I'm all gun ho to get outside and garden then by this time of year I'm tired of pulling weeds and more weeds. It doesn't help that over the past few years some kind of jaggy weed infiltrated my gardens. I pulled and sprayed over and over and they are indestructible. For every one I kill, 3 more pop up. I surrender!

This week I was home for 3 days and was planning to work outside. Did I ....no. I didn't know where to start and didn't want to start. Now I won't be home until after labor day. Ugh! I got to get motivated .

"In the spring I'm all gun ho to get outside and garden then by this time of year I'm tired of pulling weeds and more weeds."

I have actual recurring notes in my calendar for the months of July and August that say "Stay on top of weeds!!"

"I didn't know where to start and didn't want to start."

I have a large yard.

If I was to walk outside and look at all the weeds I need to pull I would lose my mind. Seriously, I'd run screaming.

So here's what I do- I walk to the shadiest weedy area, look down, and mentally map out a 4 square foot area. Just a 2x2 spot. Clear that of weeds really well- that's all you have to do and 4 square feet is easy! It's shady, it's comfortable, and it's the time to do your best thinking. Don't go out intending a marathon, just do one very small space.

Of course once you are out there and down you'll keep going. But when a job is too daunting to even consider beginning just break it down into manageable parts. It doesn't matter WHERE you start, just choose one and do one tiny area.

You could weed 4 square feet today, easily ; )

It can depend on the time of year, what needs to be done, and how I'm feeling. I tend to get some time in most mornings when it's nice out and the gardens need tending. Sometimes it's just a little while, sometimes I'm out till noon. I usually stop around noon because by then I'm often getting tired, it's getting to the hottest part of the day, and I always have other things to do inside or in the outbuildings. Or sometimes I do stuff in the shade areas of the yard when it hits the hot time of day.

Mowing tends to get done later morning through afternoon after the dew is off the grass. Each section takes an hour or two, and sections are not all done on the same day. Or even the same week.

Never enough.

I have too many projects on the go so it is always a question of priorities. I have 3 main areas (one of which is a couple of hours from my house) and most years, I manage to do 2 out of the 3. This year though, I have been really slack (although drought-related) and only managed 1 of them (my garden at home) but thankfully, it is still a rampantly lush jungle, (although no-one has space for sitting in it and you have to squeeze sideways between the looming plantage). I don't care too much.. There's always next year...and since there is never any sort of finish line in sight, just perpetual toil, I may as well take my own sweet time. One of the best things about gardening is the never-endingness of it. There are always times of the year where at least some of my projects are beautiful, while July/August are the most challenging, therefore best ignored.

Most of all, the perennial gardening mantra - 'Next year will be better' works for me. Even as the allotments are a disaster and my greenhouse is almost unpassable and the wood is already in an early autumn, I have been collecting seeds and living in a fantasy future. where all is hope, potential and shiny optimism.

Oh yeah, how much time - depends. Can spend numerous hours or a 20minute whizz round. Nothing is ever a total disaster though and the gardens are always changing anyway, without any input from me.

"I don't care too much.. There's always next year...and since there is never any sort of finish line in sight, just perpetual toil, I may as well take my own sweet time."

LOL I might change my attitude, everything will be dead in October anyway.

Well, I do start off, intending to spend a whole day in the garden...and for the first hour, I am truly dynamic. Usually because I have kept to a specific task such as weeding a certain bed. But soon enough, I begin to get a bit bored and find my gaze drifting off to some other part of the plot...and then I need a cup of tea. Inevitably, another 2 hours go by where I have been far less focused, or even aimlessly drifting around the plot, doing a bit of desultory dead-heading or wild oat pulling. And berating myself. Even if I spent the whole day there, I get rapidly diminishing returns after the first flush of enthusiasm, so I may as well be home on the sofa where I cannot see the massive pile of brushwood or rampaging dock and bindweed.

It has taken me quite a long time to actually realise that idleness isn't fatal and gardens are always in a state of change, We have a long season here in the UK. Maintaining a functioning garden at full potential, for months and months only happens if you have servants...whereas I can't even bribe or bully my nearest and dearest. I don't mind if my garden is a reflection of myself - basically cheerful but a bit tatty round the edges, with some bits best kept out of sight behind a high hedge.

"...I have been... living in a fantasy future. where all is hope, potential and shiny optimism..."

Hey, what a coincidence! I live there too lol! I never have enough time to spend in the garden. And it seems when I do have some time, it's dreadfully hot, and I don't do well in the heat. And I lost a triple oak tree so that gives me more sun than I used to have, and I am a vampire gardener lol. I don't go in the sun! So that limits my time too, as there used to always be SOME shade to work in. Still have a lot of shade, but not always on the garden beds. Lots of the poor plants in that bed near the old oak don't like all the sun either lol.

This summer, in addition to the heat keeping me out of the garden, I also am helping my daughter with her newborn twins. Lots of late nights feeding babies, lol, so lots of naps on my days off and lots of being too tired after work. But, on the bright side (as if having twin grandbabies isn't bright enough lol!) I'm looking forward to the days when I can introduce my little girls to the garden and have myself some little helpers!

In the meantime I am looking forward to the cooler weather of fall (hopefully!) so I can get back out there. Even though I will still likely be just as tired, it's a lot easier to get out there and work when the weather is cooler and nicer and you're not sweating profusely just from sitting there weeding!

:)

Dee

I'm starting to feel overwhelmed again. This may not be such a bad thing because when I get like this (or fed up with stuff) I go on a culling rampage

==>> isnt this part of the definition of August in the garden... that feeling.. and the overwhelming heat.. and humidity for us in the midwest ...

besides.. as you note... its what gives you the impetus to go wild in fall.. cutting it all to the ground... but then.. you say.. HEY.. i can do half the cutting down in spring.. lol.. which they call.. winter interest ... great when you can come up with a fancy name.. to justify laziness ..

its actually pretty easy.. do what you can.. get rid of whatever pisses you off.. and then change the name of the type of garden you have to fit the level of what you want to do out there .. lol ... e.g from formal box garden of versailles.. down to the end.. hey.. i call it a meadow .. back off crazy lady ... ... rotflmbo ...

ken

we all dream and start here: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=versailles+gardens&iax=images&ia=images

and end up here... can you see the difference in how much labor is needed? : https://duckduckgo.com/?q=meadow+gardens&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images

I've been very active this year building retaining walls and a front walkway. I'll spend 40 hours or so on each one. And thousands on materials. Amazing what's buried in the yard. And the notion that trees only send roots to the drip line is completely false. I've dug up big tree roots at least 30 feet from the nearest drip line.

Half an hour to an hour a week will be enough to keep up with all garden tasks. This is a good size garden for the intermediate gardener with a hectic schedule. It will yield adequate fresh produce for one to four people throughout spring, summer, and fall, with some produce left for putting up.

I've been mulling over this the last month or so since I posted. I realized it's not the perennial beds that are making me feel overwhelmed, its the vegetable garden and the amount of produce I have to harvest. I can't just leave it because it will spoil (well, I can, but...). The fruit, too -- fruit is labor-intensive, but the payoff is 1000% worth it, you just can't buy taste that like in a store.

So I've been putting some thought into what to cut back on next year out in the vegetable patch. The problem with that is I like to eat and I especially enjoy eating what I grow myself -- it's a just a LOT of work when it all starts coming in, and I haven't even started down the path of preserving (canning, dehydrying, etc.) other than making big batches of tomato sauce and freezing it (which, again, is a LOT of work).

O exactly so, mxk3. Back when I was masquerading as some sort of earth-mother type, I had dozens of fruit trees and bushes, as well as vegetable beds. Harvesting 60 kilos of blackcurrants from a dozen bushes took 20 hours of picking, then the preserving - moiling and toiling over a hot stove, waving a bloody sugar thermometer about (and that was just the blackcurrants - I had redcurrants, gooseberries, plums, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries - I would easily make over 100 jars of fruit jelly, then dozens of jars of chutney, pickle and so on. It killed me. I now have NO raspberries, ignore the remaining gooseberries, allow the birds to eat most of the redcurrants, have grubbed out the blackcurrants (although that was disease pressures) and halved the strawberry bed, pick a few apples and plums and leave the rest for wildlife.. I only grow potatoes, tomatoes, a few beans, courgettes and salad greens, these days BECAUSE I HATE COOKING TOO.

Every year, I swear I am growing no more vegetables apart from potatoes (because we love our homegrown Kestrel) and 9 greenhouse tomatoes (I used to grow 40/50 plants on the allotment - OMG, the endless tying in and pinching out..and saucing). Obviously, a few curcurbits and salad leaves creep in but nothing like the endless palaver of defending peas, beans, carrots, onions, on and bloody on...then gluts, harvests, cooking, storing...yes indeed - bloody hard work. This year, I simply walked away from the lot for the whole of July and August. And guess what - the world did not end, there were no thunderbolts of punishment for slackness and I have discovered unforeseen joys in idleness...or simply just observing, watching and letting it all go. After all, here we are - the start of the next gardening season, and I am still in the game, still enthused (yay, bulbs, seeds) and best of all, I swear my soil has actually benefited from fallen fruit mulches and some fallow time. I know my mind and body has.

"Half an hour to an hour a week will be enough to keep up with all garden tasks."

Ha.

You're talking one small vegetable garden.

I have something like 12,000+ square feet of mixed shrub and perennial beds.

Four hundred feet of rock borders to keep weed free, and many of those "beds" are thirty feet deep, more 'areas' than beds.

It's no small task to keep it all looking the way I like it to look.

Actually I have never achieved "all at once" perfection. By the time the south bed is done the north beds need attention again. And my portion farthest away that's still tended- well, sometimes I try not to look too closely.

It quite literally is never done except for one brief moment on the day fall cleanup is declared "done."

No finish line, only perpetual toil.

That's how I would define "gardening."

we went to a Grade School supper when our kids were young and sat with some friends whose kids were similar ages. one of their kids knocked over his drink and Jim's wife immediately got down under the table to clean up the mess. Jiim said nobody recognizes her face anymore; it's always her backside that is seen! That goes for us gardeners too, altho I have taken to wearing a sweatshirt tied at my hips to cover the bare part from the shirt hiking up... I'm glad I live in the country.........

I've long since given up caring what I look like out there- the day I walked outside in my net "bug suit" so I could water without being eaten alive OR killed by insect repellent was the day I gave up trying to look... presentable while gardening. Anymore you get what you get.

And this year's heat inspired me to do a massive undercut on the back of my head- now I can put ALL my hair up under a hat and all the rest of my scalp feels is the breeze. I wish I had done it decades ago.

So we have an old lady in a bug suit with half a bald head sitting in a lawn chair watering her garden at 5am in the dark before the heat arrives.

Those people driving by on their way to work must still be shaking their heads.

^^ LOL!