I miss the days when all the flower and seed companies would inundate me with catalogs. I spent many contented winter evenings going through them - I would fill the yard with crocuses, snowdrops, daffodils, hyacinths. The back garden would be ringed with high evergreens so my crazy back neighbors can't spy on me all the time. There would be delicious rolling mounds of impatiens, a perennial garden.
And roses. And lilacs. And honeysuckle.
Especially roses.
I should note here that every attempt I've made at gardening has failed. When I lived in Florida, I planted azaleas just outside my bedroom window. They died. An orange tree on the other side of the house. That died. A gardenia. Ditto. An apple tree suited for Florida's climate but obviously not my back yard.
Here, any attempts I've made at gardening have been yanked out of the ground by my would-be helpful neighbor, Stash, who doesn't understand about perennials or native plant species. Every time I get a compost pile going, he comes up to me and proudly says, "Hey, I cleaned up all that trash you had piled up in the back."
I do know that things grow in my yard. M the Perfect (Former) Roomie planted a lot of stuff in my yard and it grew. Last year, Stash tried hard to kill the clematis on the back fence. He found poison ivy spray I had left on the porch, mistook the clematis for poison ivy and sprayed the hell out of it. In three days, the newly-green leaves withered but this past year, made a miraculous recovery. I made sure the poison ivy spray was kept far out of Stash's reach.
I would love to fill the area on the side of Ma Maisonette with roses, would love to declare this year to be the Year of the Perfect Lawn, but I know that's not going to happen because in truth, I am a lazy-ass old bat.
My excuse is that the earth under the grass is this very weird, almost rock-like clay. I grew up seeing the red earth of northern Georgia, the clay of Virginia, but this stuff is really weird. You can't shovel this, you have to use a pick ax and hope that whatever you're planting is made of stern stuff with roots that can find a path through the clay.
Still, I furtively look at the emails I get from The Park Seed Company, Jackson & Perkins, and Wayside Gardens and dream of feathery black loam.
2 comments:
good luck with your garden! if i touch flowers i kill them- a friend of mine who majored in Agriculture told me once that people who give off a lot of pharamones kill flowers- so thats my excuse for not being able to grow things! ill let you borrow it if things dont work out this year.
I love garden porn--I save all the catalogs up to read in the tub.
If you want hard copies, e-mail me your address and I will pass them on to you. They'll even be pre-water-spotted!
Post a Comment