Fixing gardens?

I went back to the Canadian Mental Health Association office, and did some more work on the garden.  It was satisfying, if not joyful.  Why is this so?

The garden is a mess.  It has been neglected.  The further you look, the more plants are there, including, for example, a blueberry plant and a boysenberry plant.  There are sunflowers, a grape arbor, and various raised beds.  There is a thriving rosemary plant, and some moribund strawberries.  There might be a potato plant in one area: I'll have to keep an eye on it.

There are a great many problems.  Most of these are not intractable problems.  Some of them are.  There is one large raised bed, with a retaining wall, that is no longer retaining.  It is not yet a danger, but it is definitely not something that can simply be left, nor can it be mitigated.  It will be expensive to replace and refit.  A number of the raised beds are coming to bits.  They are old, and the wood planking is rotting.

But, for the moment, much of the garden is usable.  The grape arbor, having had a severe trimming about two years ago, is absolutely thriving.  I have done some research, and, half a year from now, in this coming winter, I strongly suspect that I will be able to take cuttings, and, because there is a cheap and sloppy, but feasible, greenhouse, I should be able to propagate cuttings, and start propagating plants.  Possibly to other gardens.  The greenhouse will also allow me to start germinating seeds for plants like peppers, tomatoes, squash, and a variety of other plants, to be ready as soon as there is a remote possibility of the plants surviving in the open.

So, there are problems, but they have fairly simple solutions, of work and time.  The Canadian Mental Health Association site has the tools, such as the greenhouse, some planting tables, and a shed with gardening tools.  There are actually quite a variety of gardening tools in the shed, once I went in there and did some cleaning up.

So there are problems, the problems are not intractable, and there are tools appropriate to solving the problems.  No one is tending the garden, but, at the moment, no one is objecting to me dealing with the problem.  So there is nothing to frustrate my attempts to solve the problem and address the problem.  Problems.

Of course, that may change.  The senior person seems to be on holiday, and may object to my activities when she gets back.  There is no compost heap, so I have dug out one end of one of the raised bed gardens, to act as a compost pit.  It's possible that some people may object to this non-standard approach.  I can already hear the discussions of the possibility of rats.  But, for now, nobody is opposing me, and I am addressing the various problems, as I am able, and as I have the time.  I am undoubtedly making mistakes, since I am definitely not an experienced gardener.  But I am already improving the gardens situation, and appearance.  At the moment, I can look forward to learning more about the organization, and the facilities of the organization, and the resources of the organization, and improving this unused and neglected, well, one can hardly call it a garden at the moment, it's more just a piece of waste ground.  But it definitely has potential to be a garden.

(The boss was back from holiday, today.  I don't think she is going to mind with what I'm doing in the garden.  I was talking about what I had planted, and the fact that I had excess kale plants in the community garden, and she wondered if she could get a kale plant.  Then she wondered if she could get three kale plants.  So I went down to the community garden, and got six kale plants, intending to let her choose three, and then put the remainder into the CMHA garden.  She took all six.)

I'm sort of moving back to the Delta model.  In Delta, for the extremely brief time that I was there, I was taking care of five gardens.  At the moment, I'm taking care of three.  I am enjoying the gardening.  I still have *no* idea *why* I'm gardening.

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-dangers-of-gardening.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2022/04/four-and-counting.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2022/05/faith.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2022/04/death-to-squirrels.html

  In some senses, the volunteer work does not allow me the time, that I would like, to deal with some of the garden issues.  I can always think of more things that I could, and possibly should, be doing to improve the three gardens under my care.  However, for the most part, I don't see the volunteer work as a problem: what I tend to see as more of a problem is my own lack of energy, and the fact that, basically, by early afternoon, I am finished in terms of productive work, and the regular household work, and life administration, that I find so annoying.  It is necessary to keep me alive, and in the situation that I am in.  But I find it very annoying, and the weak enjoyment that I get out of things like tending the gardens does not seem to be worth the annoyance and hassle of keeping myself alive.

On balance, I still wish I was dead.