Rosefolly, I quite agree.

Watching my little garden grow before my eyes has been of great pleasure, and it is my morning joy to go and see the first Radiance blooms, how much has Devoniensis opened, to see how many more Zeffy blooms there are today.

And how much exactly did it rain last night???

And see if the slugs have returned!

Gean

Well said, Paula. Flowers are only a moderate part of gardening pleasure.

Right now I'm watching the buds grow on a small potted gardenia. This plant was given to me (at my request) by my daughter for my birthday last fall. Naturally it was stuffed full of nutrients and water for a big flowering then; I repotted it soon after I received it, without a good feel for what a gardenia needs though I read up about it. The gardenia went through the winter in the greenhouse, was placed in part sun with other plants to keep it company, and has been preparing for a flowering for some time now. Interesting? You bet. Of course a small part of my mind is occupied with thoughts of my gardenia growing through the years, getting bigger, sturdier, heavier and harder to move about, a monument to my daughter's being ten years old and giving her mother a birthday present. There are so many things in life to worry or grieve over: what kind of an existence would I have without a garden to make me happy?

Melissa

Oh yes my garden brings so much to my life. My walk is a short one since there isn't much yard but it constantly amazes me how many plants can fit in.

Of course I have selective vision, ignoring the crunchy brown grass and focusing on the sunflowers now in their glory. Watching baby roses develop their unique shapes is fascinating, the blooms seem like a bonus.

Finding surprises like a birds nest in the bamboo and gold-rim caterpillars on the dutchmans pipe. It has made me more aware of the world in general on a garden-scale. I see flowers now in places I never did before, in vacant fields, on the interstate median.

I just booked a vacation in Canada at a small hotel and may have chosen it because they show a wonderful garden that I can imagine sitting in taking in the view.

I can't find the book right now but will paraphrase Monet who said "Above all I must have flowers."

Denise

Many people say to me "Your garden must be so relaxing" or "You must have so much fun". Fun and relaxing are not the words I use to describe the creative effort and the shear physical expenditure that are my lifes work. Satisfaction is a good word for me. Joy and wonder at times mixed with anxioty and exhaustion are a good decription. I am thankful to be a gardener, to have a garden. I'm glad to share that with others here.

I find that I am so wrapped up in the next area or bed to be planted, that I am missing some of the plants that have already been planted, and are flowering or doing well.
Then something catches my eye, and I am forced to stop for a while to admire it.
Sometimes, it can be a simple planting. To-day I have been admiring Nepeta Walkers Low with Artemisia Powis Castle.
They look so good together, and very satisfying.
Daisy

I am constantly amazed at the life, renewal and beauty that my garden imparts. A new flower, a basal break, tomatoes to eat, a butterfly feeding, new growth, sun and shade. All things in my garden are miraculous to me, and I often take the time to appreciate them. I have also found that the garden is much more beautiful to me after I have worked long and hard in it. This is the payment for our labours.

I love this thread! This is SO ME. I love the feeling of looking at my garden and seeing what's up..the life in the garden..the bees, blooms...birds. It is true true bliss and when I feel closest to our maker.

I'm really enjoying this post-----You are all so poetic.

My garden has given me so much pleasure over the years it is difficult to express.

Florence

This may be sacrilege, but right now my shade garden is giving me immense satisfaction - more than the roses. Daily water has helped that area, too. The shrubs and perennials have gotten larger and are about to encroach on each other's space, so the bed looks very bountiful. My Limelight and Pinky Winky hydrangeas have flower buds on them. My Variegated Hydrangea actually bloomed this year - after 4 years in the garden. The flowers weren't real spectacular, but oh, well, at least there were flowers. The Endless Summer hydrangea is blooming away in a lavender-y pink. It's so cool and green under the trees. I do love it very much.

I think the roses are showing their appreciation for the alfalfa/fish/seaweed tea - some of them anyway. Some, like the Louis Philippes, are in their down time, and poor Clothilde Soupert got knocked by the rains before her bloom was done. She was SOOOO pretty, loaded with flowers and green, green, green. Anna Olivier has finally come into her own. By golly, she not only LOVES heat, she NEEDS heat, and the rain doesn't faze her much. Yesterday we found a big nest in the tree that Fortuniana is trying to climb into, and DH was watching four different kinds of birds fighting over it - a cardinal, mockingbird and 2 others. Don't know who won yet. My Dragon Wing begonia has a bird's nest in it. A couple of weeks ago I was sitting on the bench next to it and lifted a leaf to check the soil dampness, and whoosh! a bird flew out!! So I lifted another leaf and took a peak...a nest with some tiny eggs in it. I was afraid I had scared the mama off for good, but yesterday when I peaked, I saw fuzzy evidence that the babies were there.

Rosefolly, I think your subject line is very apt, because 'garden satisfactions' is different from 'garden satisfaction'. As I read everyone's posts, I was stricken with guilt at the thought of saying that my garden is my life and any semblance of such a statement, partly because I'm afraid I devote too much of myself to it (but that's another topic!). I do have satisfaction but, of course, you know where that leads a perfectionist brain, so we won't go there either. But the plural, satisfactions, well, that's a different story. There truly are so many satisfactions for me in my garden. The startling individual progress of each plant as I walk by. Progress that by definition wasn't there yesterday. The old caladium bed that's now Niles Cochet's bed that's in too much shade that I thought was going to be devoid of caladiums until 3 days ago is suddenly filled with them - again. The many Red Ruffle azaleas that are scattered around the rose beds are green and healthy. I guess they like water, too. Oh, and sometimes the garden deigns to share its secrets. Yellow Marguerites rebloom after a haircut, pink ones do not. And now I know what Late Summer means to an Indy Snowfall daylily - June 20th! I guess somewhere it's late summer but not here.

So, yes, I'm glad I started writing this. I almost didn't. I was being poopy about the whole subject. But the garden would not be satisfied until I acknowledged my satisfaction. We're both very pleased now.

Sherry

Yesterday I watched a baby praying mantis work his way up Clotilde Soupert. This morning, Misty (for Ms. Deer) was waiting for her apples when the cats and I emerged on the deck. So many miracles...

When I was teaching, I did an excercise with my students (high school). I'd take them into a garden or park and have them write down everything they could see, hear, smell. They all "finished" in ten minutes. I'd say, no, you haven't looked closely enough. Now it took a half an hour. Another, "You haven't looked closely enough." Eventually, they "got" it and by the end of the afternoon they were still writing things down.

Aha Paula, you at last have a fondness for a tea. You know I love Lady H and she can do no wrong.

My garden is more frustration for me now, as forced neglect has created chaos. I keep trying to plug away and have hope for next year.

Bluesibe---I understand what you mean about "forced neglect"--

It is very difficult to restrain myself because I LOVE to get down and dirty and dig in the dirt but for the past few years that is a "no-no"----

I've learned to adjust to my limited ability and enjoy what the garden gives me ----

Of course what was once a garden is now a jungle but the survivors keep rewarding me with lovely blooms---certainly not a candidate for "House and Gardens"----LOL

I'm now able to walk around the garden which is thrilling for me----no shovels----no digging--- no pulling weeds but I can throw some food and alfalfa around which is wonderful.

But I still find many satisfactions-
----
Florence/ Pollyanna

This has been one, long cold, wet spring. Rain, day after day. There were maybe three nice days in May. We had a 45 mile an hour wind at 15 degrees which took out most of my rose canes. Hail got my Iris, peonies, delphiniums, and phlox. Still the lilacs were incredibly beautiful this year.
Last night a tornado hit the Billings Metra Center and wiped that out. Which is extremely rare here.
Today it finally happened, SUMMER! and it was my turn. Five hours of working on the Garden of the War of the Roses and I got my mojo back.

I love pulling weeds. It gives me a great amount of satisfaction to pull this ugly thing out.

I love the smell of the basil at my back door.

I love the smell of the lavender and thyme all around my garden while I'm checking on plants and weeding. The breeze blows up around the hills and around me. Hummingbirds come and check me out while I work.
I like the change of the plants through the seasons and I love seeing plants that started as tiny slightly-sad looking things turning into big bushy darlings.

I enjoy going out in the garden and seeing all the flowers, but especially the butterflies, bumblebees and other insects having so much fun flying from flower to flower. Even the yellow jackets are in a better mood! They love the birdbath :)

The birds have a creek behind the house to enjoy, with lots of trees and shrubs growing on both sides, but they do love the little garden under the plum trees. That's designed for them, so it's going to be almost like a thicket when the plants fill in. It's also a little more protection from the barn kitties...who (despite their fondness for stalking the robins) are very sweet and do a great job of patroling the garden.

In this thread I have found kindred spirits! I can relate to post after post. My garden is a place of beauty and relaxation to me. My satisfaction comes from the creative work that I have invested in it. I, too, enjoy it all . . . even the weeding and especially the pruning. And, yes, I walk through my garden each day (even in the rain!), eager to see the changes and make plans for the future, despite my saying every season that I'm finally done. :) I know I'll be out there tomorrow morning to see if my new Amazing Grace (Miriam) bud has opened . . .

I have read and re-read this thread but felt unable to add anything remotely life-enhancing. This is often an ambivalent time of year for me since rather than lolling around in floral bliss, this half of the summer usually heralds many hours of painful, slightly boring fruit and veg gathering. All well and good and at least I can see (literally) the fruits of my labours. But what then. Well, I will remind you that this bucolic interlude is followed by something much less idyllic - a massive and endless cook-in. Even now, at this moment, I am disturbed by the horrid smell of burnt redcurrants (whilst I sat typing away, the notional jam has reduced to an evilly sticky toffeish mess on the bottom of one of my better pans). The many blackcurrant bushes are laden to the ground....which is where I will be crouching for the concievable future, wresting minuscule fruits of hard to reach stems....and I haven't even started on the brambles yet. Tomatoes - in order to have a years supply of our own, admittedly superior ketchup, will have to be paraded around every day between now and september, tying in, rubbing out side-shoots, weeding, more weeding, feeding, watering.....and then, the Dickensian kitchen nightmare as the house fills up with vinegary smells for weeks on end.
So folks, before I bring you all down even more, I am off to town to laze in a cafe, read a newspaper, maybe buy a book, possibly some bright hair ribbons (I had hoped to start a trend with cheap multi-ribboned plaits but no takers!) and put all things garden related, especially food related, out of my head for at least a few hours. Cheerio, enjoy your gardening.

It is so nice to read these posts where I find "friends" who express my feelings perfectly. I also love to walk out in the garden in the evening to see what has occurred during the day, as I can't be in the sun until later. When I am feeling lonely, depressed and missing my hubby, it comforts me--and I also feel quite annoyed that something is working on my green peppers and green beans. In other words, it makes me "feel" at least temporarily. God works in miracle ways and uses various things to stir us up. - Barb

Barb,
There's a reason why Eden is described as a garden. It's the place where Nature smiles at us, where the material world can be experienced and is still bearable. I can't imagine any reasonably happy life for me without a garden.
Melissa

ah yes, well my garden 'holiday' was, in fact, no such thing. Hordes of shoppers, all walking at snail's pace, a million clothes shops - how many outfits do folks need?. Even though the town centre is less than a ten minute walk away, I actually venture there hardly ever. Moreover, my sweetheart and son have been sunk in gloom following the disgraceful ineptitude of our (their?) national football team. Were you watching Andrea?
Overpaid, mincing primmadonnas don't really float my boat so it was back off to the allotment for me....with considerable gratitude. There I can be a miserable misanthrope. I can wear the same dull (and filthy) gardening clothes for days (weeks, months?) on end. There are strawberries. And fat peas. And roses. What was I thinking off - this is a little paradise.

Sometime back me had a talk with DH, that a lot of fun in life one can get by just observing little wonders around, be that oddly shaped potato in the sack, strange cloud and so on. Gardening has much of that, since you never can tell how exactly everything will look - you can more or less know the eventual shape of a shrub, but you never can predict where exactly each cane will go.

Each evening when Gary and I get home from work we walk around the gardens. It helps us to focus on the beauty of the blooms.
You see this is a young garden. Only 15 months old. So if we arent careful easily it becomes; "what is the next chore or bed to be started". Instead of, "oh my".
Roses are the jewels of the garden.
Jeannie

I love reading this thread - your thoughts tell so much of what I feel but can't express. I think it becomes a way of life, deeper and simpler, and in our way, adding beauty to this world. And I think it gives us hope.

I am always planning, planning, planning, floating ideas for this crummy cement hard clay, getting discouraged when we get weeks of our endless 100 Degree days, no rain and nothing will bloom except a few Texas-tough plants that don't know better and actually love that west sun! But, come Fall, everything comes back so beautifully and it's like spring again, so hey, it's worth it!

Also, the friends made, books collected, the studying, the successes, failures, what an education. We are a lucky bunch.

My neighbor and friend, Estaban, and his family moved in across the alley about five years ago and runs his landscaping company out of his garage (and part of my driveway,it seems...it's amazing how these things slowly transpire :). The other day I was dressed for work and went to unlock the gates as it was his day to mow. He was pulling out, stopped, then asked if everything was okay (my husband is seriously ill). I said yes, and then started laughing when I realized he didn't recognize me without my grungy shoes, shorts, no makeup, dirty T-shirt and baseball cap!

Joy and contentment

beyond words. Petals drift.

The cool breeze smells of rain.