Gardening Grannies’ New Year’s Resolutions
The Gardening Grannies are always good for a few New Year’s Resolutions!
Despite their frequent lack of permanent success, the Gardening Grannies always make a couple of New Year’s Resolutions about this time each year. It just seems a good way to express their optimism for the coming year and that they … and their resolutions … will make improvements over the previous year. After striking resolutions not related to gardening (weight loss, more time with family, exercise more, you know the drill), we were left with the following New Year’s Resolutions:
• Garden logically (translation: better planning, less spontaneous buying). That one may last until the new spring offerings hit the local garden centers and then it’s toast
• Become more skillful with “companion planting”
• No more naked gardening (translation: mulch everything….what were you thinking?)
• Try something new (this is an easy one and it always sticks)
• Be sure to put the right plant in the right place (borrowed from gardening writer Joe Lamp’l)
• Pay for our gardening habits by having a yard sale to sell extra seedlings in the Spring
• Do more container gardening and start fewer high maintenance projects
• Teach a kid to garden
Granny Griffith is working on a booklet about the best wines to have with the various fresh veggies in season. She’s been “working on” this book for more seasons than the rest of us care to remember but, this year, she swears (and she does) she’s going to get it done. I’ll let you know and we’ll share some of her best ideas….if she keeps that elusive resolution this year.
Even though only an estimated 45% of Americans make New Year’s Resolutions and less than half of those that do have still kept them after six months, the Gardening Grannies always get together and share their resolutions. Sharing seems to impart a bit of backbone and, well, any excuse for a party!
As a final note, Granny Griffith would like to remind everyone about an old Welsh tradition that you might consider for your New Year’s Eve celebration. In Wales, when the clock starts to strike midnight, you open the back door of your house to release the old year. Then you shut it to lock out all of its bad luck. At the twelfth stroke of midnight, you open the front door to welcome in the New Year and all of the good luck that comes with it. Cheers!!!
Gardening Grannies, a group of avid and Master Gardeners live, love and garden on the Delmarva Peninsula. You can reach us at gardeninggrannies@47abc.com.
