Gardening

The more I work in my garden, the more worried I get about my dissertation.

Much of what makes a garden work is done before anything is planted, and I have a tendency to go out and buy six-packs of whatever’s available and try to make them grow, even in funky soil. Last year this worked because I stuck to the garden box in the back yard, which was a compost pile and was fertile, and I planted a few things after removing the grass from a small square in the back yard.

(I also have a bunch of tomatoes out front with a weed barrier and morning sun, and those are fine this year just as they were last year, but it kind of messes with the metaphor to talk about those).

This time around, I tried to turn over the grass in the back yard area for my larger garden, and I didn’t get rid of all of the grassroots. The plant starts also sat out for a week between purchase and planting because I was eager to buy them but didn’t actually have time to get them in the ground the Sunday when I got them. They sat out and got a little dry during the week in between.

Not getting the starts in the ground on time and having not prepared the ground well enough to begin with has made it rough for several of the plants. They are growing to some extent, but I might have to use fertilizer on them, or at least mix some compost with a couple of bags of topsoil and dog turds just to get them some “food”.

The lesson for my dissertation is to prepare well, and have a focus. I need to clear away the 10 bright ideas I get every week and just focus on getting my project done. Most semesters, I have survived the way these plants will, which is to say I start out kind of a mess, but I put a lot of extra effort in at the end, basically piling on the crap and just fighting to stay alive the last few weeks, just to get things done.

I don’t think that’s going to work with the dissertation, and, aside from tomatoes and pumpkins, which I can’t seem to kill if I try, it’s going to be a rough year for the garden despite, or maybe because of, my efforts to make it bigger and better than ever.