Well, I’m about to go on vacation, back home for a sisters reunion. Lucky for me my husband isn’t going, because then I would have to find someone to take care of the yard and houseplants.

 

After putting in a lot of work on your garden, it pays to find someone who will care for it properly while you're on vacation.

We’ve been gone twice for longer periods, with unfortunate dire results. The first time we were in India for three months for a yoga and meditation intensive. I put my trust in the next-door neighbor teens to water things. When I got home things looked pretty good, considering I’d left it in the care of two young people who don’t know anything about plants. However, my Japanese maple worth about $125 had bit the dust, and as I started cleaning up for the fall I realized that many of the perennials that were along the front of the border were gone. They didn’t notice that they weren’t getting enough water from the drip system and they had just died. I’d lost probably a couple hundred in plants total.

The next year we had the opportunity to attend another 50 day intensive in India. This time I left it in the care of the older of the two teens, thinking that, since she’s older, she’d be more responsible. This time I came home to catastrophe. Although my perennials had made it through in better shape, mainly because I had reworked the drip irrigation, the entire herb and vegetable garden were a total loss. To top it all off our screened gazebo had broken one of its tethers and instead of fixing it they just kept putting it back up only to get toppled in the next high wind. This means that we have a gazebo that may never be usable again. So not only did we lose all our food crops, but also a $200 gazebo.

After that I decided that, unless it is an absolute must, I’ll not be away from the yard during the summer. Lucky for me my husband is staying behind this time. He knows how important my plant friends are to me and he’ll do his best to take good care of them. Not only that I know that if there is a problem he won’t be afraid to contact me and ask me what to do.

So, when you are looking at taking a trip, you must consider your yard if it’s during the growing season. In most areas of the country our gardens need supplemental watering at least once in awhile or we’ll come back to a dead garden. Even if you have drip irrigation, you need someone to check on it and make sure it’s working properly. Hopefully you have a gardening friend, or a neighbor who is as enthusiastic about gardening as you are.