While I haven’t written for about a month, I have been gardening.  First task of the New Year garden in San Diego is rose pruning. With 21 roses, this takes me about two weekends with all the other things on our weekend “schedules.”   But I split it up nicely with pruning one weekend and cleaning, mulching, dormant spray and Ada Perry’s Magical Formula the next.

I hate dormant spraying and it always stresses me out to the point of in-action and ridiculous-ness (like three trips to Ace Hardware, fights with the hose, freakouts about chemicals and the chickens, kids and dogs), but it did help my roses last year with all the humidity. This year I had fruit trees to spray as well so I had to do it.

That done, now I still have mulching–my compost never seems to be ready. Fortunately, there were no rose pruning accidents like getting stabbed by giant thorns (2011 pruning), resulting in about 12 doctor visits and ending me up at a rheumatologist to diagnose what she decided was some type of arthritic condition brought on by a thorn lodged in my knuckle.  That took six months of diagnosis, lots of out-of-pocket fees and ended in me running from an MRI after discovering I really do have claustrophobia. (I had no idea when the technicians asked and then sent me into that outer space tube. I don’t know why they have a black hole at the end–really, they should tape up comforting pictures.) I now wear gauntlet gloves up to my elbows when I prune because I never want to go through that again.

The year 2011 a fading memory, 2012 a success and 2013 well under way, we are celebrating our winter garden and eating lots of wonderful plump sugar snap peas, lettuce, arugula and kale.  Bulbs are coming up everywhere and I’m waiting for a long stretch of day when I can get back out there to finish planting, pruning and mulching.  Oh yes, and with our weather fluctuating between 75 and sunny and 50 and foggy, drizzle, I’d like next Saturday to be sunny and balmy, please. I know we can’t complain about winters here in San Diego, but I do like to garden in the sun.