I gave myself a break from writing these blog entries for a month, mostly unintentionally. It started with being out of town, then a bit of procrastination happened. Once I had the opportunity and mindset to write again, I had the idea of crafting a poem about my garden. I made a few attempts at it, but was struggling with sticking to either a “through the seasons” theme or an “experiences with the five senses” theme. It went off on tangents and became overly wordy even though not nearly completed. We shall see if I can wrangle those words into a readable form eventually, but for now I'm just writing a brief update as I usually do here.

The garden is doing great, in spite of the typical slow-down of my gardening activity in winter. There are still flowers in bloom, and a lot of the greenery has become thickly-leaved. The lawn is downright lush this time of year (and once again decorated with meadow mushrooms). With these shorter, cloudier days, cooler temperatures, and a few good soaks from rainstorms, it's no longer suffering from dead brown spots. The rain finally arrived while Steve and I were in Hawaii for Thanksgiving week. It was such a relief not to be worrying about my plants drying out while I was away and unable to water them.

I aim to spend at least 3 hours out in the yard this weekend, and a couple of quick morning tidy-ups during the week. I could start with thinning the seedlings of salad greens, picking the last cayenne peppers and green tomatoes, pulling up expired plants, and stacking unused pots in the vegetable patch.

Some of the bushiest hedges should be cut back into neater shapes. I don't know yet if we'll decorate the bottlebrush hedges in front of the house this holiday; they do look pretty with red lights wrapped around them candy-cane style. The privet hedges are mostly recovered from a fungal blight. It has been a relief to see the leaves growing back. In between rains I'll continue to treat them with neem oil or copper spray, and to remove the remaining brown-spotted leaves.

Lately I am quite thankful that I've introduced my favorite herbs into the garden over the years. The savory dishes of autumn and winter, such as the potato leek soup Steve makes, and my chunky marinara sauce, are so good with chopped-up handfuls of fresh herbs added. Basil is still a tricky one for me to grow, but perennials such as rosemary, oregano, thyme and sage have inhabited my container garden for a long time. The lemon balm plant is relatively new: I should experiment with uses for this, and the lavender. Perhaps making an infused syrup, or scented candles?