Gardening Is Great Because You Don't Have to Be Good at it to Enjoy It

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Bob Bauer
November 24, 2019 (Last Updated: ) | Reading Time: 2 minutes

November 24, 2019

Gardening is like sex in that you don't have to be very good at it to enjoy it. Puttering around in the dirt with plants and rocks doesn't have to be goal oriented. You can create a small scene and tweek it for awhile before moving on. The scenes can connect into an area, and you can admire your work for days, until you detect a change would be good. Having veggies in the garden gives you an excuse to go water it, because value will be lost if you don't. Once you're in the garden tons of stuff present themselves for attention..

Two hours later you'll probably be hungry unless you've got a box of Triscuits in the greenhouse. The internet is full of people saying that whatever you do is not a waste of time as long as you enjoy it. They are primarily defending "gamers" who are catching flack for pursuing a "useless endeavor". We gardeners get to eat the results of our labor, and feel fulfilled at the beauty of our creations..

November 25, 2019

Bird shadows are what constantly interrupt my gardening thoughts on these bright cool November days. I'm always looking down, and their movement across the landscape startles me. Birds share my garden with the insects which have been diminishing in the freezing nights. I was surprised to see big bomber flies landing on the leaves, because all the other pollinators are gone. Houseflies still abound, and continue to land on me. Strange considering how much horse manure is laying about. Then I realized..

Desert. A sweet ol' man I am I am. Insects are our friends, and watching them is part of the reason I enjoy gardening. We probably all got our gardening start as kids sitting in the dirt waiting for someone to come out to play. When an insect happened along we were entertained for awhile..

November 26, 2019

I caught the big fat mouse that ran in front of my compost pile the other day, and upon closer inspection it appears to be a rat. A very beautiful gray and slate colored rodent that I saw running along the grape vines, four feet off the ground, several times in the past. Long tail, long nose and pointed ears differentiates it from a mouse. I can finally see why some people have rats for pets. This guy was not a dark, dank, denizen of the sewers, but a clean, light colored, two shaded, soft, fuzzy and alert critter. A woodland inhabitant that has more right to be there than we do..

What I thought were birds in the grapevines I now realize was sometimes the rat. It explains why the cats and dog showed so much interest in that section of fence line. I reset the trap in the same spot because the odds are that there are more. A family of rats can process more garden waste in a winter than all your worms and night crawlers combined, but who wants to fertilize with rat poop?..

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