One of mine is to fertilize. I never fertilize and it's probably why some of my daylilies are almost the same size plants almost 5 years later. With a little over 3 month growing season there isn't much opportunity for plants to multiply quickly. I am hoping that some fertilizer or alfalfa drenches will help.

Secondly I am going to finish putting mulch in the second half of my largest daylily bed. Started that in 2012, never finished. One side looks nice, the other becomes a weed bed.

Though we have a yard about an acre in size I'm hoping to get into a community garden plot this year so I can grow more vegetables and intermingle some of my seedlings there. I'll have to dig them up in September, but at least I would have a place to get them in the ground to get started.

Lastly, I'm going to make it a point to incorporate more annuals into my perennial beds so when the perennials are done blooming I still have some type of color palette.

What are your (hopeful) resolution/plans for this year?!

To water my front annual bed more regularly. I constantly forget, or put it off and they never look as nice as they should. I am also going to plant that bed with something simple. No mixtures, no rows nothing obvious when something goes wrong. For example last year I planted dark purple, light purple and white tulips in rows (sort of hombre). For whatever reason all of the dark purple plants died. It was light purple, white, dirt/weeds.

My resolution is to really start downsizing my beds. Its getting to be too much to take care of.

Cindy, I like your resolution. Downsizing is something that we NEED to do. This year I plan to seriously look at daylilies to start moving out. I want to be able to enjoy our daylilies instead of having so much work to do when they are blooming. I want to hybridize and have no time for that. Our garden will be on the Region 5 Spring Tour this June and then a tour garden for the 2015 National. Much of our time will be spent getting the garden ready for these tours and just maintaining it. Once we get through the National, I want to do a major downsize (at least 500 daylilies). We have lots of hosta and other shade plants in pots to plant this spring. If I can get all that planted this spring, I will feel that I have accomplished a lot. We want to get three or four terraced walls built once the weather cooperates and we can find someone to build the walls. They were terraced last April and now the walls must be built (with crossties). I can't plant anything in these areas until the walls are built. I feel the clock ticking away on this project. We are planning to swap out the Castle Wall blocks with real stacking rock for a raised bed put in last winter. Once early spring (March) gets here I will have much work to do in other areas, namely fertilizing and mulching the daylilies. David will be around to help more in 2014! I guess my resolution is to start the downsizing process, get done what we can, and not stress over what does not get done in 2014. What would we do in 2015 if we got everything done in 2014? Don't ask!

There are so many things that I want to do in the garden, and at the top is photograph my plants and document the photos. I have an IPad, but last summer I was behind in my work because I was so fatigued from the radiation treatments that in May I could only work for two hours a day. My normal routine was to work twelve hours a day. Eventually by late June, I was working in the garden six to eight hours. I never did reach my normal stamina.

I want to put in a drip irrigation system in my flower beds this summer. If I can figure out how to do it. I just have overhead sprinklers right now and, being in Utah, the air is very dry and I think half of the water evaporates before it has a chance to hit the ground and soak in.

My new years resolution is to win the lottery and buy a large farm with deep red soil and plant daylilies with my cats till the cows come home.

Gleni said:My new years resolution is to win the lottery and buy a large farm with deep red soil and plant daylilies with my cats till the cows come home.

I have that same resolution, cats and all

wow that is a feat of itself right there, who else could get lottery-farm-soil-daylilies-cats-cows- all in one sentence?

my resolution this year is to start a garden.

because I don't even have one! BOO HOO!

Did you move?

My resolution is to revamp one large older bed. It is just outside my kitchen window and I want to put in some of my new ones coming in Spring, so I can admire them from afar while I stand and wash dishes/prepare food.

I need to keep ahead of the weeds better this year. Brett is my backup plan for heavy work and a new bed. Also I have purchased a new Brother printer that goes to the computer and I need to make new labels. I need to line out a bunch this Spring too. Geez, I have a lot planned.

Moved indeed. And moved and moved. Would have been homeless if we didn't have family who took us in. We moved from MO to OK, sold our house (READ-- MY BELOVED GARDEN
Then my dh had health problems and couldn't keep his job. We are a one income family due to my homeschooling our girls who both have special needs and then also I care for my son who is disabled so I am unable to work. That meant moving back to MO and bumming off of family and living on welfare lol

We were jobless for 6 months and now my husband is only working for like 3 days a week. Anyway, we bought a house last summer but it is a dump. I mean big time. The people who sold it were actually thinking of bulldozing it. But we fell in love with the yard and the location, we are gutting the house room by room a little at a time. It is expensive, hard work, but it is coming along and will be nice when we are done. In the mean time, there is practically nothing here promising for a garden. The soil is very hard and rooty (just cut about 15 trees down and hauled off) and the sewer leach field is smack all over the back of the yard and there practically isn't a front yard much. But it is 1.4 acres and has a bunch of mature hardwood trees on the lower end. It does have a septic tank and a well so that is wonderful. The side yard will make a nice shade garden if the sweet gum tree there does't throw out too many roots. I have a LOVELY hemlock there too but for some reason I have a gut feeling it is dying. First off it is the only tree on the place I really have feelings for lol so that automatically means it will die Secondly it lost a large amount of needles last summer/fall, and I don't know why. Can't find any reason for it. So anyway the whole place needs work and I lost a lot of plants/money not to mention all the WORK -15 years!- when I moved. I can't even imagine what it will take to rebuild my beds, improve the soil and get in loosened, start new trees and shrubs and get my daylilies and a vegetable bed going again. WAY to depressing to think about. Way. And to top it off, my mom still lives right behind my old house and the new people who bought my little house with the oak cabinets and pink floor tile, have completely ruined the yard. Really. It is too stressful to drive by. Even one of the elderly neighbors said she sat in her window and cried the day they had a backhoe come out and obliterate the gorgeous flower bed in the front yard. They planted some puny trees there in a row. Only I guess they aren't smart enough to realize the water main is RIGHT underneath where they put them. Plus the soil there is severe clay and rock so they will never live. They already had 2 of the trees die, I suspect because they were too lazy to water them last summer. The poor soil conditions and the water main, are why I put in an 12" tall raised bed. I figure it could be put together again if the water needed worked on, but you can't put back a tree! They only mowed the yard 3 times last summer, once only mowing paths around the yard. They parked an old junk car out behind the shed. The flower beds in the back yard have weeds in them taller than me, it was unreal. They took out the fish pond saying they were afraid their daughter would drown in it, even though it was fenced off from the yard. totally weird. BOO HOO! (ok I am counting to 10 and doing breathing exercises now...) I just have to remind myself that it isn't mine anymore. My mind knows that, but the rest of me wants to kick them out and doctor everything back up, I feel so sorry for it all... now you KNOW I am a nutcase LOL I have post traumatic I-sold-my-home syndrome !

Frilly, I am so sorry to hear all this. I am glad that you can see a beautiful future garden where you are now living. Please try to remember that there are better days ahead, and Rome was not built in a day. When you get ready to replant your garden, please send us a T-Mail. We will send you plants at no cost to you. Hang in there!

Thank you for your generous offer, I just may take you up on it when/if I ever get there! Rome was not built in a day, but I'm smart enough to know it wasn't built by one person either ! Is a garden ever done? What if it was done? I'd have to start over LOL

I am trying to downsize so I would be more than willing to send you some plants Frilly.

Frillylily said:Thank you for your generous offer, I just may take you up on it when/if I ever get there! Rome was not built in a day, but I'm smart enough to know it wasn't built by one person either ! Is a garden ever done? What if it was done? I'd have to start over LOL

I hope you will. Try to take one day at a time. If we ever finished everything here (and we won't), we would be out there tearing something up so we could create more work. Just the way we are wired, I guess.

Oh Frillylily--my heart is breaking for you. I know the despair of seeing beloved gardens, years of accomplishment and joy not to mention sweat, tears, time, and $$$, demolished while looking at an apparently bleak and hopeless start-over situation. It IS waaaay too depressing--almost incapacitating. I know.
(my first house lost it's foundation; insurance wouldn't fix it; I couldn't fix it; insurance Co. cancelled me; bank offered to insure me for triple the mortgage. Needless to say, I took a total bath on that. Buyer paid cash outright, ruined the gardens, shored up the house a bit and rented it out. kills me. I'm still paying the mortgage and regularly hemorrhaging cash for repairs on the second house and 7+ acres in the middle-of-nowhere; can't sell it--no body wants it. Haven't seen it so I don't know what's become of my gardens, but I hear that only the ones without boulders were mowed down and the rest are overgrown/outtacontrol/weedy. kills me too. and you already know quite a bit of the story of my current dump-in-progress)
I don't know if it helps at all--but I really do feel for you! And I know that you can imagine what it will take--a lot of time and a lot of work and a lot of love--because that's what you put into your lost gardens...
(And seriously, how can you even visit your mother?)
my suggestion--start small, get some instant gratification with some containers while you labor to improve some soil in an area that you can see and appreciate everyday and put some of your favorite plants and flowers there. You can move them later when designs come together. It will help you feel better. and then it will be less depressing to think about and work on the rest of it--a little bit at a time

Cynthia, thank your for your offer to send plants. I will probably take you up on that when I get somewhere suitable to put them.

Dirt, you hit the nail right on the head. The only thing that has kept me going is knowing that I will start over, that and the many photos I took over the years of my plants. I have back ups for my back ups because if I ever lost my photos, I think I would go out of my mind and need a straight jacket!
Visiting mom was difficult the first year or so, but now that we bought another house and finally have some hope of normalcy again, it is easier. It is scary to realize how fast your life can fall apart. Health problems at the top of that list. Financial problems, lose a job ect and within a matter of weeks or months, everything you worked so hard for and depend on is torn from you. I can really see how alot of people in that fall into depression and can just never find a way back out. Luckily I am too stubborn for that lol... I told myself I would rebuild my life and my garden even if I was 90 years old and had to dig it with a spoon using my teeth on my hands and knees!! See how I am ?

Good on you Frillylily!!!!

"dig it with a spoon using my teeth on my hands and knees!! See how I am ?"

~Whew --well alright then, I think you're gonna be okay--had me worried for a bit
I've got a variety of tough, clay adapted stuff--hit me up too if you want whenever you're ready