A Little Green about the Edges
I have never been accused of having a green thumb. When I was a child, I entertained myself by pretending to garden but really just killing off the cacti that my loving parents would buy me. How hard is it to keep a cactus alive? Evidently too hard for me. Interestingly enough, I have the same effect on sewing machines: death and destruction abound. But I was determined to turn over a new leaf (haha) when we moved this last time since we actually have a yard now. I had grandiose ideas of going out into the backyard, cutting dew-misted flowers, and bringing them inside to festoon our home with sprigs of springtime. Yeah, not so much.
The backyard got some grass grown in it, mostly thanks to the hard work of my single-minded and yard-work inclined husband. We tried to plant a little garden in the enforced gardening space provided for us, but when we took our trip to Tennessee in April, Trigs went a little stir crazy and dug up all the bulbs the Man had planted--this in spite of the decorative fence put up by aforementioned husband (he tries so hard). Our garden in the front has done much better. Admittedly, the Man did most of it. He left me a little plot to "try my hand" (but mostly to make me feel like I'd contributed something), and for some reason I had it in my head that mine would blossom into this incredible English garden, overflowing with fragrant blossoms, and make his neat, tidy area look bland and boring. Once again: yeah, not so much...
My grandmother has a sign in one of her flower beds that says, "Everything I grow in my garden is tired," which is funny because she's actually quite an excellent gardener--these genes skipped me. I'm thinking about stealing her sign. My gladiolas grew up and flopped over haphazardly. The zinnias (I think they were zinnias...) sprouted where they shouldn't have. And the daffodils never came up at all. It looked like a tornado went through it, to be honest. So then I just left it. For weeks. Until yesterday at which point I decided to man up, go out there, and weed--something I'd never done before in my life. And I have to admit, while I'm a rotten gardener, I do like the smell of dirt and green beneath my fingers. It was...cathartic. Plus, the cute little gardening gloves that I'd made the Man buy me last year--for no other reason than that they were green and I was pregnant and not supposed to be gardening bare-handed (I didn't garden, period)--were still pretty adorable.
The backyard got some grass grown in it, mostly thanks to the hard work of my single-minded and yard-work inclined husband. We tried to plant a little garden in the enforced gardening space provided for us, but when we took our trip to Tennessee in April, Trigs went a little stir crazy and dug up all the bulbs the Man had planted--this in spite of the decorative fence put up by aforementioned husband (he tries so hard). Our garden in the front has done much better. Admittedly, the Man did most of it. He left me a little plot to "try my hand" (but mostly to make me feel like I'd contributed something), and for some reason I had it in my head that mine would blossom into this incredible English garden, overflowing with fragrant blossoms, and make his neat, tidy area look bland and boring. Once again: yeah, not so much...
My grandmother has a sign in one of her flower beds that says, "Everything I grow in my garden is tired," which is funny because she's actually quite an excellent gardener--these genes skipped me. I'm thinking about stealing her sign. My gladiolas grew up and flopped over haphazardly. The zinnias (I think they were zinnias...) sprouted where they shouldn't have. And the daffodils never came up at all. It looked like a tornado went through it, to be honest. So then I just left it. For weeks. Until yesterday at which point I decided to man up, go out there, and weed--something I'd never done before in my life. And I have to admit, while I'm a rotten gardener, I do like the smell of dirt and green beneath my fingers. It was...cathartic. Plus, the cute little gardening gloves that I'd made the Man buy me last year--for no other reason than that they were green and I was pregnant and not supposed to be gardening bare-handed (I didn't garden, period)--were still pretty adorable.
