Well just as a hint, Kevin, have you ever noticed how healthy those flowers look along the roadside? I tell my customers at the local Lowes I work at (and this is MY experience here) that generally most perennials came from wild flowers anyway and most wildflowers (and perennials) dislike ammended soil. They prefer lean to poor soil. They do like real compost or top dressing because in nature they get leaf fall and such, but over the years I've discovered that my rich, raised beds aren't perfect either. They were too rich. They drained too quickly and when we had drought, I lost things. It's never going to be a perfect year every year, but there are momentary times of glory. The spring bulbs were outstanding. A bush was mind blowing, a bird brought a flower you didn't plant and it turned out to be awesome. The berries were unbelievable. Then there are the years that the blister beetles eat the leaves of the Japanese fall blooming anemone's and you never see one bud. Or the hail pounds the first opium poppies you've gotten hold of seed for after searching for decades for them into pulp when they've shown you you're going to have a bumper crop of flowers for years to come.
Gardening is a crap shoot. You can't always predict how things will come out, but that is what makes it fun and worth the sweat and trouble and frustrations. It's my way of calming down and of venting when I'm frustrated. Nothing like being pissed off and going out and taking it out on weeds......when I'm aware I'm not pissed off anymore, there's green stuff to put in the compost pile........
If you're giving up after six years, I wonder what your expectations were in the first place? The "hobby" of gardening isn't a six year endeavor. It's a lifetime commitment. Like raising children or having a pet.
When the people who move up here ask me "what blooms all season here and how do I cope with this clay soil?" I tell them there is only one thing that blooms all season besides most annuals, and that's silk flowers. And there is nothing wrong with clay. most plants love it. (well alot of perennials love it as it's nutrient rich....) Roses must love it too as the ones I dug up still persist and pop out baby shoots the last seven years since digging up the three that were here all those years. And had I deliberately planted them, they would have been riddled with black spot, insects from hell and every blight imaginable.
Kevin, only you can explain why you are giving up and are done with gardening. But you should have been told from the first that this was no mere hobby. This is a lifestyle and a commitment. Something most of us will do until we can no longer lift a trowel or bag of soil. And even then we'll find a way or will garden in our minds. It won't be the same but it's not something we can quit so easily.
I call myself the madgardener because I am not pissed but totally mad about gardening honey. It started out as something to do to fill an empty space in my heart and has blossomed into something much more fulfilling to me. I have found wonderful lifetime friends here in this newsgroup, as well as locally with people I've reached out to. It has enspired me to do something else I love, to write, and one day I will make countless of my gardening neighbors happy and finally publish that notebook of my writings. I might not be a best seller, but I bet there will be some that will get my book just because we've shared these moments together these years here and it's personal.
I could show you countless pictures I've taken this season of my flowers and moments in my ridge top fairy endeavor, but at the same time I can also tell you that there are crushing moments of disaster. The new puppy has dug up a pulmonaria that took me three years to get settled, the new Lobelia had finally gotten happy in the soil and was growing and it was dug up and exposed twice. I lost my bronze fennel so there will be no catapillars this year to eat it to the bones and butterflies to move onward. The Swamp sunflower I dug up has flopped so badly in my front flowerbed that I fear I might lose perennials that I truely love.
But there are also stellar moments. My fig tree this year has the largest crop of figs on it I've ever seen since Mary Emma gave me the twig daughter from hers. Total idiotic diasters, like why did I plant a magnolia five feet from this fig?? Am I insane? Will the Yoshino cherry make it in the woods room? Will the Forest pansy redbud make it thru the winter? Have I killed the Harry Lauders' twisted filbert by planting it in the sunny spot in the upper woods and wasted $30?
Will I continue to over crowd perennials or will I stop and give the ones I have room to show me what they can do? (I doubt I will stop crowding plants, so I will be guilty of endless murder because of the crowding, or I will finally make enough room to accomodate all of them.........I do have almost an acre to plant, just need to get my head outa my butt and start clearing more).
So you're not alone in these frustrations. But you might be one of a few that throw in the towel because you hate to fail. I don't look at it as failure, though Kevin. I look at it as learning experiences that teach you so that when you are as old as me or older, you can look back and laugh at yourself for your impatience or foolishness at thinking you could get a handle on Mom's Nature. I hate to see you quit, but it's your call after all. It's always sad when gardeners stop gardening, but if it's not your pail of dirt, then I wish you well in what you endeavor to do from here.........
> ... I've been at this gardening thing for about 6 years now,
> vegetables and flowers/shrubs. As I entered the hobby, I had no idea
> how many "outside" factors there would be (no pun intended) Whether
> it's been drought, too much rain, clay, deer - all my hours and hours
> of work over the last few years looks horrible. I thought of raking
> out the mulch and running the mower over it all, but I don't think
> even grass would grow well. I've watched this group, read dozens of
> books, watched HGTV very Saturday. I'm sick. Not one bed I have
> looks good, even my black eyed susans have all fallen over. If it's
> not dead, it's either diseased or brown. Despite efforts to amend the
> soil as I've read countless times, it's as hard as concrete. Thanks
> for all your help recently and maybe I'll see you in another group
> sometime. Take care....
>
> Kevin