All of the plants have been moved inside to be wintered over until next year. Due to a sudden cold snap a few weeks ago, and my poor judgement, many of them are suffering from extreme frostbite. For a couple of weeks I trimmed prudently and hoped for the best. Yesterday I gave in, cut back severely and transferred all the bits and pieces of geranium to one long window box. Phil O’Dendron has had an extreme hair cut and is waiting pot-bound for the move, to be divided into two pots or perhaps just one much larger one. My variegated Spider plant did not make it.

Such is the life of a gardener.

In the midst of what will be a prolonged move I come to realize how much gardening stuff I actually have. Piles of plastic pots have gone to recycling. Piles of more substantial pots have gone to my daughter’s farm along with coils of hose, wooden window boxes, clumps of perennials and eventually the frames to my raised beds, composter bins and…dirt.

Yes dirt.

My landlord wants things back to the way they were when we moved in. I guess he is afraid the new tenants will not be gardeners. It is amazing just how much soil I have built up in just a few years with compost, bags of potting soil and some well rotted sheep manure. My son in law should be able to make good use of it in his raised beds. Here is where I wish yet again that I had a truck. It will be tricky hauling this in my hatchback. Though I suppose that will keep the amount of shoveling at any one time down to a level my back might be able to handle.

Let us hope.

Inside of course we are boxing up everything else. I took a load to the thrift shop today. Tonight I rent a storage unit, and maybe we will get my boxes moved downstairs, and a load into the car. Tomorrow is my day off and I guess I will be spending it tooling up and down the hill with whatever loads I can manage.

The grandkids have been a great help (because Grandma pays and gives transportation to the mall?)

The landlord has notified us he will begin to show the house soon. NOOOOOOooooooooOOOO!

We are a swamp of boxes and odds and ends, plus the daily detritus of living in a house of turmoil, and the next few days are my busiest. Hopefully this will be detoured into next week when we have had the weekend and some of my half days to catch up. I did get the downstairs neat and clean today, with the boxes stacked into one corner. The bathroom is scrubbed to within an inch of my life. But there is a stack of containers in the hall to be taken to my car tonight so that I can drop them off into storage after work tomorrow.

This ballet between us moving out and moving in and the landlord not having the place sit empty is exhausting just to think about. Soon it will be all over and what will happen will have happened. It sure would be nice to be a wizard and just make it happen ….poof!