Spring is here. It's time to kill flowers

Last spring I got really good at planting flowers. Okay, really good is probably taking it seven steps too far. I planted a few flowers. There, that felt better. I went on to detail that the pansies turned out to be pansies and that my azaleas died, according to some people they need water, poppycock, I say, and often. I can't say poppycock enough. I also planted some sunflower seeds and after a few weeks of ignoring Steph's pleas to cut the weeds in the yard we had some nice big stalks for a period of time until the squirrels ruined them like they ruin everything. I also planted geraniums, which blossomed well into summer and are pretty much the sort of flower that was made for me.

So this year I decided to get smart. No pansies. No azaleas. If you need water and attention I'm not the gardener for you. I enjoy planting and then forgetting about you like a friend from junior high. Note: Gardening is one of the single greatest activities because you actually do something when you do something. Ie, you get results quickly. When I plant a geranium after fifteen minutes or so, it is planted and looks nice, until I stop watering it, and generally gives me that swell feeling of accomplishment that so often evades us. Note: This same type of accomplishment is rarely achieved through the completion of any task online. The two accomplishments, which could theoretically be similar, seem very far apart.

So now I've got some dirt under my fingernails.

M: Gloves are for sissies
S: Our soil might have lead in it. And, that's just disgusting.
M: Don't tell me what to do.
S: Stop doing gross things.
M: Where's Sadie? I want to hold Sadie.
S: And this is why...


And we've got six, hearty if the bastards know what's good for them, geraniums in our front yard and also a rhododendron, hard to spell but hopefully easy to kill and a nice feeling of accomplishment. I don't think it's too big of a stretch to say that if the whole world took up gardening we would never have any more wars and that people everywhere would be raving about how good Kale is. Also people would always have dirt under their fingernails, and we'd see an overwhelming revival of the saying, "God made dirt and dirt don't hurt." Note: I also planted some purple flowers, lavender of some sort, in an entirely haphazard way, and I don't suspect those seeds will bother me ever again, and the whole process was less like planting and more like a burial.


I'd like to say that our whole yard is getting whipped into shape, but every time I look outside I feel mild disgust at what I see. Despite what my parents tell me I feel that some part of me, the gardening part, is vaguely Germanic, and resists anything that looks disordered. Unfortunately, the other aspects of my personality lead me to just look at the window and shake my fist at the problem rather than plunging headlong into a working solution, in spite of today's exploits. I'm more of a brooder than a doer. And really, who's to say which is more valuable in the end? actually putting a garden in order or looking out at the garden and being disgusted at the lack of order? Again, I've no earthly clue where this impulse comes from as I'm perfectly content to accrue dishes in the sink for days and only clean them on a fairly regular basis because I think S likes it.

So, yeah, no promises of hummingbirds and butterflies and bees doing some saintly dance in my yard if you ever stop by. No, you're still more likely to catch me swatting at mosquitoes or picking up sticks that stop my all powerful push mower in its tracks. Oh well, at least I have a lot to brood about.