Judy Terry
| Special to the Press-Citizen
November, with its changeable weather and early darkness, has never been my favorite month. Usually, I write about cleaning up the garden, storing the tools, and celebrating your summer successes.
However, just for fun, and with a little revision, I am going to recycle a column I wrote in November 2016.
I chose this subject since I was thinking of all the mistakes I make in the garden — many deadly— and with tongue in cheek, decided to chalk them up as “sins.”
Here are the seven deadly sins of gardening:
Sloth: I picked it first since it is my biggest weakness when gardening. Weeds are the challenge for all of us. I have had weeds higher than my giant sunflowers next to them. It’s so easy to plan to weed tomorrow and face it, it’s a hard and boring job.
A solution might be to divide your gardens by five and only weed a fifth each day. It won’t be so overcoming and chances are, by the time you get back to the first patch, they won’t be too tall.
Better yet, hire someone else to do it, if you can.
Greed: This is a big problem when the garden centers start bringing out the new plants in the spring. I always come home with more than I can ever get around to planting. In the past, I have suggested leaving your billfold and your first born at home since there is something uncontrollable going on and greed must play a part.
Lust: Nothing erotic about this, it is plain desire. Somehow wanting to have a fantastic, beautiful garden can lead to intense need as you flip through those enticing seed catalogs that will soon be filling your mailbox.
Gluttony: When you make that seed order twice as big as you planned.
Wrath: The day the bill comes or the credit card is due. Or when you realize the deer have eaten all the tulips in the night or the tomato plants have a blight. Or it rains too much, there’s a drought, Japanese beetles descend, and the list goes on.
Envy: We all know what this is like. It’s when your neighbor has cars lined up checking out their yard or you take a garden tour and wonder why you didn’t try some exotic plants. You wish you had planted many more rose bushes and how could anyone have 200 different hostas?
Pride: Can’t find much fault with this if you can maintain some modesty. If you have planned carefully, worked hard, kept up the maintenance, and are willing to share some healthy produce, I say let your pride show. And don’t listen to that voice in your head that says, “Pride goeth before the fall.”
Judy Terry is a garden columnist for the Iowa City Press-Citizen.
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