Autumn has me kneeling in the beds one hour and standing at a garden centre counter the next. The afternoon my wallet ended up in the bulb bed, and what I changed about what I carry.
There are a few weeks each winter when the back yard genuinely has nothing happening in it. Here is what I've learned to actually do with that stretch, instead of rushing to fill it.
I have no shed, no shelter, and no permission to build one. Here is what I actually do with bulbs and tools over winter in a rented rowhouse, including the first attempt that went badly.
My seed ordering used to be pure impulse, driven by whatever caught my eye on a slow evening. Five years in, I've found a timing that works better, mostly by getting it wrong first.
I've tried to stretch the growing season indoors for five winters now, and the honest answer is that a rented rowhouse with no permanent fixtures allowed has real, physical limits I've had to accept.
Every January I sit at the kitchen table with five years of handwritten pages and work out next year's plan from what actually happened, not from what I hoped would happen.
Five winters into gardening this small rented back yard, I've stopped hoping and started paying attention to what genuinely makes it through, and what I quietly let go of instead.
Saving seed from my own plants at season's end sounds simple until you're standing over a drying pod trying to decide if today is the day. Here's how I actually make that call, and where my notebook comes in.
Eager to get ahead one September, I put my garlic in weeks before I should have. It came up fast, grew tall well before winter, and I ended up with a harvest I wasn't proud of the following summer.
My landlord's lease is clear about no permanent structures in the yard, which meant I had to figure out an entire end of season routine using only things I could set up and take apart myself.