What I Learned Last Year
My Excitement for the upcoming growing season is this slightly jittery, positively anticipatory friend in my mind. Present almost always, but not often making a ruckus. It sits in the corner of my mental greenhouse (the corner of my brain where all my green things live), waiting with a gently bouncing energy for me to look its way.
My Excitement knows it’s important, but it also knows how to be patient. My Excitement understands that its role in my mental greenhouse is crucial - it’s what keeps my energy drip-irrigating into my indoor and outdoor plants year round, sustaining interest beyond warm-weather mania and focuses me towards the marathon cycle of season after season after season. For that, it can’t be chaotic, nor have dramatic peaks and valleys; it has to be gentle and vibrant in as perfect harmony as it can manage.
My Excitement knows it isn’t the only friend who calls my mental greenhouse “home”. Its partner Reflection holds just as important of a place right next to it.
My Reflection is wholly pensive. Its essence is calm, unhurried, and equal parts humble and self-congratulatory. Reflection is who I want to make space for here today.
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Last year was the first in which I took my garden seriously. I’d had gardens before but they were containers or forgotten or ill-planned for or wholly uncultivated plots. Last year, we had a new house on an empty dirt lot and I got to do what I wanted on an entirely blank slate. My Reflection didn’t have much experience to go off of beyond general knowledge of seasons and plants, plus I didn’t get my garden beds in until late spring, so last year was a season of experimentation. It was a season of low-expectations, little preparation, no research.
And I loved it.
I didn’t bind myself to science or perfection. I didn’t hold tightly to logic or yield. I let myself just watch nature do what it would in my space. I let myself learn but spending countless moments observing what was working and what wasn’t. No notepad, little photo evidence. Just instinct.
As my passion rooted itself deeper and deeper still into my heart, mind and spirit, I started trying to learn about what I was learning through experience and I decided to pursue a Colorado Master Gardener apprenticeship. I wanted to learn why things mattered in my garden and invest my instinct and passion into developing knowledge and understanding. I wanted to feed my Reflection so I could pursue future growing seasons not with a perfectionist-mindset, but with a preparationist-mindset.
Here is what I learned (in no particular order):
I learned that automatic irrigation is something to be used on vacation primarily, and not as a crutch to learn your entire water management practice on.
I did the latter and dealt with a mirad of issues combined with the wet early-season we had: powdery mildew on my squash, mushrooms in my grass, an oxygen-starved tree and iron-deficient hydrangeas to name a few.
I cemented what I already knew but completely ignored: just because you’re ready to transplant your seedlings into their summer beds doesn’t mean your seedlings are ready for their summer beds (!!!!!). *cue patience*
I was fascinated by the logically understood but never fully recognized by me benefit of biodiversity.
I’ll write more on this another time but in short: My God, the hours I spent watching beneficial insects find my garden and invest their whole selves into keeping things in order was fascinating! Lady beetles and bees and praying mantis, and more spiders than I can count.
And finally, I never expected for growing flowers with my vegetables would bring me nearly as much joy!
I threw some wildflower seeds in empty spaces throughout my garden and not only did it attract birds, bees and everything in between, I found joy and peace in admiring, cutting and giving flowers to my loved ones.
Much of what my Reflection is focusing on now as I prepare for this season has been learned in retrospect as the winter has progressed. I’m so eager to put these lessons to the test this season. I’ll share more soon about what this looks like for me this year and how I’m aiming to tame my perfectionism as I strive for wider biodiversity, a higher-yield ecosystem and a 1/4 acre plot that feeds not just my family but the wild bugs and birds we share it with.