{"id":10275,"date":"2024-06-25T08:28:30","date_gmt":"2024-06-25T08:28:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=10275"},"modified":"2024-06-25T08:28:31","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T08:28:31","slug":"the-hasty-gardener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=10275","title":{"rendered":"The Hasty Gardener"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

O Rose, Thou art Sick \u2013 and it\u2019s all my fault!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My trouble is \u2013 in the words of Bernard Cribbins \u2013 that I\u2019m \u2018too \u2018asty\u2019.The garden is full of evidence of the sorry consequences of \u2018astiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s just that everything else seems more pressing than gardening , so I end up with too little time for it and a tendency to rush things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m surprised I\u2019m not kept awake at night by the sound of shrubs protesting. Yet again they\u2019ve been stuffed into a hole that\u2019s far too small for them. Then they are doomed for a certain term to linger in limbo, neither growing nor dying, while below the earth their poor little roots are pressing desperately against the too-smooth and too-tight walls of their cell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s taken me years to work out that this is what\u2019s going on, mainly because I\u2019ve never been able to find the information  listed in the indexes of gardening books. Things improved slightly with the advent of the !nternet, where I found a community of people who were asking the same daft questions that constantly arose for me. But even this fails me sometimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One question I\u2019ve never found the answer to is what to do about holes in shrubs. I mean areas right in the middle of them with no shoots, leaves or flowers that no amount of artful pruning will fix. Perhaps I should adopt a more rigidly botanical approach, and not just search on \u2018hole\u2019 but use some Latin term: \u2018hiatus\u2019 or \u2018lacuna\u2019? Or perhaps this is just not a thing for other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another tell-tale sign of hastiness is the overcrowding in some parts of the garden. When the shrub I\u2019ve planted so inadequately last season fails to thrive, my solution has been to plant another one next to it the following season, in  a desperate bit bid for some colour and foliage. Once the first plant finally manages to establish itself it completely swamps the second one, and God help the third one, planted when the second one fell short of expectations\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this shaming evidence highlights one of the huge drawbacks of gardening: it\u2019s hard to cover your tracks. Cooking is no problem: there are loads of quick fixes for food that is too spicy\/bland\/sweet\/salty\/thin\/thick\/collapsed. And if the worst comes to the worst, the embarrassment only lasts for a few hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out in the garden, though, a struggling shrub squats there reproachfully the entire summer, showing off its spindly stems, wizened leaves and multicoloured diseases for all to see (unless you opt for the scorched earth look), testament to its carer\u2019s fecklessness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the rose? Well, as ever, hearing \u2018time\u2019s wing\u2019d chariot drawing near\u2019 and remembering that the roses were showing signs of black spot, I charged outside with the Rose Clear and let the plant have it with both barrels \u2013 having neglected to shake the bottle first. So now I\u2019ve spawned a new genus of rose (are you listening, David Austin?): spotted Rosa Moribunda. On what to do about this Google is silent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I let the rose bush have it with both barrels<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":10285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,298,67,182,55,60],"tags":[563],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10275"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10275"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10288,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10275\/revisions\/10288"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}