Nature is the devil.
I'm getting pressure from various sources to blog again, so for today's reminder on just WHY I stopped blogging in the first place, we're going to discuss one of the dangers of suburban living: gardening.
When we first bought our house, we were instantly charmed by the small, cozy tree lined lot. The western side lot has a grove of pine trees and a black walnut tree and was taken up by a winding cottage garden, filled with wildflowers and tall lush grasses. The current owner, Lori, was on her knees tending to some tulips, which ringed the fir tree, and the walk to the door featured flower beds lined with decorative stones and tiny terra-cotta pots filled with small African violet. The front beds boasted more of that tall grass and viney ground cover along with some hardy scrubby bushes and a few varieties of hosta.
It was very pretty, and very dangerous. Bryan took a look at the yard and said "Lady, I'll mow the lawn and you can do the gardening!" Needless to say, I was not happy with this arrangement because I am not an idiot. I know many people adore gardening in the same way many people adore running. They have that fanatical gleam in their eye that people get when they force themselves to do something which you know from harsh experience is painful and really, really boring. I am also NOT a gardener. Plants that will thrive anywhere die under my cold, evil touch. I also knew that mowing the grass twice a week on a 1/4 acre lot would be nothing compared to dealing with the beds and the tiers of flowers our skilled former owner had planted. She knew her stuff---early blooming bulbs for March and April, tall gorgeous wildflowers for a carefree summer look (all edged with low useful herbs of course), and late blooming shrubs for Indian summer. I knew instantly that 1)I would fail and 2)that Bryan uses the appearance of guileless ease to disguise the fact that he is Satan, and wants his wife to toil every day in the Garden of Endless Maintenance. It wasn't helped by people who would come over, squint critically at the yard and say "you should GARDEN! Gardening would be nice, wouldn't it? You should do this here, and that there, and these (insert name of expensive tropical plant) are LOVELY!" Most of these suggestions were for annual plants which need to be planted every year (what's the point?) and did not take into consideration things such as climate, rainy lake shore weather, or the fact that I have a full time job with a long commute, in addition to cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping and general tasks and hobbies.
Nevertheless, one of the hazards of buying a house in the cheap cottage district of a nice neighborhood is that people have gardens, damnit. Or they pay people to garden for them, since I've only seen three other people outside cursing at the soil and screaming "GROW FASTER, I PAID GOOD MONEY FOR YOU!" (OK, maybe I'm the only one who does that. But to be fair, the only other three people I see outside are men, and they spend more time frowning thoughtfully and bustling about in a manly fashion than they do pulling on their frizzy hair and shrieking.)
Last spring was difficult, since I had no idea of what to do to winterize the lawn. We'd (and by we, I mean Bryan) harbored the mistaken belief that covering the beds with leaves would protect them from wind and erosion during the winter, not stopping to think that they would also make a huge gooey damp mess to clean up in the spring. Also, since we bought the house in July we weren't sure which plants were the early blooms and which were horrible weeds which would surely take over the plots. I spent too much money at the garden center trying to cover what probably would have been better if I'd actually, like, spread new dirt over the worn areas and just planted some rosemary or something as ground cover and said the hell with it.
This year we heeded the lessons from last spring and tried to get up as many leaves as possible. It worked great, except that the city didn't pick up our leaves for a week and a half and by that time most of them were in the beds again. Also, it turns out one of the hazards of living on a shady romantic plot is that there are leaves everywhere. Not the delicate autumnal leaves gently gracing the walkway, but knee deep leaves molding from the underneath upwards, plastered to the foundation and strangling everything but the weeds and killing the grass.
It also turns out that in order to have a carefree riotous burst of color in your lovely low maintenance cottage garden, you actually need to trim down the long plants after the bloom, or else they will die and leave horribly scraggly grassy trails across the lawn, tangling with the leaves and making a nightmare out of raking.
Here are some other things I've learned, in our charming fucking gardens:
1. Everyone else on the street will have lovely looking plots but you will never see THEM out there in ill-fitting jeans and stupid sun hats, and you will get the impression that the entire time they are watching your bent over body and laughing, thinking "that idiot knows nothing about lawn care! Why didn't she do that two months ago?"
2. Pruning after blooming is very important. Very. Important. If you prune after the bloom, you will save yourself work in the spring, although you will have to risk bees and giant spiders in order to clear away the debris.
3. Pine needles make a lovely fragrant scent. They are also a bitch to rake up, especially when intertwined with the straggly dead plants you failed to prune in the summer because you are afraid of both bees and spiders.
4. Even if you are diligent about picking up dog poop in the winter, and even if you try to pick up dog poop OTHER dogs leave on your lawn as the snow melts, there will still be MORE poop molding underneath the leaves that have blown into your plots all winter, not to mention those dead plants you failed to prune in the summer.
5. Black walnuts sound romantic and are a pretty green. They are also deadly and can kill you in a windstorm. Or at the very least, they will make fun dents on the hood of your car.
6. Whoever planted a black walnut tree over the driveway and over the tin awning for the side door must have had a death wish.
7. Black walnut pits and snow-damp dog poop look a lot alike. Pick both up with a plastic bag or shovel, NOT your thinly cotton-gloved hands.
8. After hours of backbreaking effort to clean winter wind blown leaves and junk out of your beds, you'll still look at them and see leaves and wind blown junk. My solution to this will be to dump more dirt on top of it and kill anyone who dares to mock this brilliant method.
In conclusion, if you inherit a garden, you might want to consider using a book to locate the high maintenance plants. Then dig them up, fill in the plot with dirt, and start over with some nice hardy junipers or something that don't take any work. Or you could pay some handsome, sweaty young shirtless thing to come tend the beds while you sit on the porch with your mint julep. Mmmmmm. Maybe I could learn to like "gardening" after all.
When we first bought our house, we were instantly charmed by the small, cozy tree lined lot. The western side lot has a grove of pine trees and a black walnut tree and was taken up by a winding cottage garden, filled with wildflowers and tall lush grasses. The current owner, Lori, was on her knees tending to some tulips, which ringed the fir tree, and the walk to the door featured flower beds lined with decorative stones and tiny terra-cotta pots filled with small African violet. The front beds boasted more of that tall grass and viney ground cover along with some hardy scrubby bushes and a few varieties of hosta.
It was very pretty, and very dangerous. Bryan took a look at the yard and said "Lady, I'll mow the lawn and you can do the gardening!" Needless to say, I was not happy with this arrangement because I am not an idiot. I know many people adore gardening in the same way many people adore running. They have that fanatical gleam in their eye that people get when they force themselves to do something which you know from harsh experience is painful and really, really boring. I am also NOT a gardener. Plants that will thrive anywhere die under my cold, evil touch. I also knew that mowing the grass twice a week on a 1/4 acre lot would be nothing compared to dealing with the beds and the tiers of flowers our skilled former owner had planted. She knew her stuff---early blooming bulbs for March and April, tall gorgeous wildflowers for a carefree summer look (all edged with low useful herbs of course), and late blooming shrubs for Indian summer. I knew instantly that 1)I would fail and 2)that Bryan uses the appearance of guileless ease to disguise the fact that he is Satan, and wants his wife to toil every day in the Garden of Endless Maintenance. It wasn't helped by people who would come over, squint critically at the yard and say "you should GARDEN! Gardening would be nice, wouldn't it? You should do this here, and that there, and these (insert name of expensive tropical plant) are LOVELY!" Most of these suggestions were for annual plants which need to be planted every year (what's the point?) and did not take into consideration things such as climate, rainy lake shore weather, or the fact that I have a full time job with a long commute, in addition to cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping and general tasks and hobbies.
Nevertheless, one of the hazards of buying a house in the cheap cottage district of a nice neighborhood is that people have gardens, damnit. Or they pay people to garden for them, since I've only seen three other people outside cursing at the soil and screaming "GROW FASTER, I PAID GOOD MONEY FOR YOU!" (OK, maybe I'm the only one who does that. But to be fair, the only other three people I see outside are men, and they spend more time frowning thoughtfully and bustling about in a manly fashion than they do pulling on their frizzy hair and shrieking.)
Last spring was difficult, since I had no idea of what to do to winterize the lawn. We'd (and by we, I mean Bryan) harbored the mistaken belief that covering the beds with leaves would protect them from wind and erosion during the winter, not stopping to think that they would also make a huge gooey damp mess to clean up in the spring. Also, since we bought the house in July we weren't sure which plants were the early blooms and which were horrible weeds which would surely take over the plots. I spent too much money at the garden center trying to cover what probably would have been better if I'd actually, like, spread new dirt over the worn areas and just planted some rosemary or something as ground cover and said the hell with it.
This year we heeded the lessons from last spring and tried to get up as many leaves as possible. It worked great, except that the city didn't pick up our leaves for a week and a half and by that time most of them were in the beds again. Also, it turns out one of the hazards of living on a shady romantic plot is that there are leaves everywhere. Not the delicate autumnal leaves gently gracing the walkway, but knee deep leaves molding from the underneath upwards, plastered to the foundation and strangling everything but the weeds and killing the grass.
It also turns out that in order to have a carefree riotous burst of color in your lovely low maintenance cottage garden, you actually need to trim down the long plants after the bloom, or else they will die and leave horribly scraggly grassy trails across the lawn, tangling with the leaves and making a nightmare out of raking.
Here are some other things I've learned, in our charming fucking gardens:
1. Everyone else on the street will have lovely looking plots but you will never see THEM out there in ill-fitting jeans and stupid sun hats, and you will get the impression that the entire time they are watching your bent over body and laughing, thinking "that idiot knows nothing about lawn care! Why didn't she do that two months ago?"
2. Pruning after blooming is very important. Very. Important. If you prune after the bloom, you will save yourself work in the spring, although you will have to risk bees and giant spiders in order to clear away the debris.
3. Pine needles make a lovely fragrant scent. They are also a bitch to rake up, especially when intertwined with the straggly dead plants you failed to prune in the summer because you are afraid of both bees and spiders.
4. Even if you are diligent about picking up dog poop in the winter, and even if you try to pick up dog poop OTHER dogs leave on your lawn as the snow melts, there will still be MORE poop molding underneath the leaves that have blown into your plots all winter, not to mention those dead plants you failed to prune in the summer.
5. Black walnuts sound romantic and are a pretty green. They are also deadly and can kill you in a windstorm. Or at the very least, they will make fun dents on the hood of your car.
6. Whoever planted a black walnut tree over the driveway and over the tin awning for the side door must have had a death wish.
7. Black walnut pits and snow-damp dog poop look a lot alike. Pick both up with a plastic bag or shovel, NOT your thinly cotton-gloved hands.
8. After hours of backbreaking effort to clean winter wind blown leaves and junk out of your beds, you'll still look at them and see leaves and wind blown junk. My solution to this will be to dump more dirt on top of it and kill anyone who dares to mock this brilliant method.
In conclusion, if you inherit a garden, you might want to consider using a book to locate the high maintenance plants. Then dig them up, fill in the plot with dirt, and start over with some nice hardy junipers or something that don't take any work. Or you could pay some handsome, sweaty young shirtless thing to come tend the beds while you sit on the porch with your mint julep. Mmmmmm. Maybe I could learn to like "gardening" after all.
posted at 2:11 PM
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