After a week’s vacation

I’ve just come back from a week’s vacation in London, UK, where my husband is from. I did my best to wrap things up in the veggie and flower gardens before leaving - but here I stand in a garden that looks a little bit worse for wear. While I am (as per usual) impressed at how good my dahlias look without much intervention, I am also somewhat shocked that all of my stakes and supports seemed to have fallen to the side. Perhaps there was a big storm while I was gone? Plus, I have hundreds of over-ripe and split sun gold cherry tomatoes on the vines and in the beds, rotting away. (Even though I told all of my neighbors to come raid the tomatoes while I was gone. I suspect they didn’t know I truly meant it.)

But still, it’s not that any single major thing has gone wrong, but rather that a million tiny things have, and I’m noticing the accumulation. I don’t spend a lot of time gardening during the week. I walk through my veggie garden a few times a day and do little tasks - harvest a few tomatoes, pull a weed, deadhead a few flowers - but I don’t spend any length of time gardening until the weekend. So, I guess I just didn’t think I was getting all that much done. But now that I see how much seems to have happened in just one week of neglect, I realize the true impact of those chilled out walks through the garden when I’m procrastinating or taking a break from the computer screen. It really shows the impact of just a few minutes of attention every day!