This truly could be the story of my life in planting. Thank you, Pinterest, for the photo.
Yeah, that about sums it up.
By Sandra Snyder on 9/11/14
NO ONE EVER accused me of being a gardener. In fact, if I’m honest, I have to say sometimes I even need a little tutoring in weed vs. plant.
A.A. Milne was a wise man.
Good thing I have great neighbors. By great neighbors, not only do I mean people on each side of me who I know look out for me — my favorite time was when they let me know the ridge vent was falling off my house and I, of course, asked the only logical question: What is a ridge vent? — but they do things like bake brownies with little nuts on top when they know I’m housing friends for the weekend. Nothing like opening the door to a note that reads, “I have brownies. Call, and I will bring them over.”
May I never overlook, though, what they do for me without even knowing it. And by that I mean they garden. All around me, they garden, in all seasons, and they garden with grand success. Now you might think I would be ashamed that I do not garden and that, by comparison, my yard looks a little barren, especially from the street. Ah, but I ask you to reconsider. One of the beautiful bennies of living in a tightly packed neighborhood — I can throw a pebble from my kitchen window to my neighbors’ and probably hit the sink — is that people who excel where I lack can box me out, in a manner of speaking, in the best possible way.
In other words, when friendly folks are promenading their pups or lollygagging along on a Sunday stroll, my gardenless property will not stand out nearly as much as it would if I had acres of lonely land around me. Instead, occupying a tiny lot between two similarly tiny lots popping with color and flowers tends to have some residual benefits, some rubbing-off power. My neighbors’ flowers almost look like my flowers, and if they get rather big and inch over onto my property, well, all the better. Each day I pull into the driveway I simply cannot help smiling at the healthy little pair of bloomers that pokes through their back fence, as if to say, “We know you need us. So here we are. We’ll stay as long as you’ll have us, too, because we rather like the breathing room on this side.”
And Neil may not bring Barbra flowers anymore, but not so with my neighbors. When things get especially bleak outside my walls, next-door Susan sure does show up with posies. Sometimes she even plants them for me. Hands down the best summer flowers in my backyard are what I think are perennials from the iris family. Susan at some point had an abundance of them, brought them over, put them in the ground in two minutes flat, and up they have since come, year after year, as perennials are supposed to (but often don’t, at least if I did the planting). All I know for sure is they are tall, radiant in crimson-orange, and they can do a nice little bossa nova in the right breeze. They look sort of like this:
A lanky summer flower is an especially beautiful thing. Crocosmia, my friends, how I miss you.
Every year about this time, when people are calling it fall — blasphemers, all — but we truly know in our hearts it’s still summer, I tend to take stock of how I did this year, flower-wise. My report card? Not so great, mates. But I did get rid of all my tired-looking old red mulch and replace it with a fresh new cover of dark-brown rubber nuggets. (Words to the wise: Having heard horror stories about flying mold, or “artillery fungus,” I’ll always spring for rubber mulch.) Just when I got a little puffed up, though, the angel of doom descended. A mighty storm came upon my land and laid into all my carefully filled bags of old mulch, tearing them asunder, rescattering mulch all over the tree lawn and inviting me to do what I’d just done all over again.
I. Was. Not. Having. It. (Side note: Are. You. Kidding. Me?)
My cleanup efforts were, of course, half-baked because, alas, I was defeated and depleted. Suffice to say the bits of mulch I never did pick up were left to lie on the tree lawn, killing the grass underneath. If only those who might have walked by and shaken their heads could have known my virtuous intentions. I’d like to find one of those little signs on a garden stake that reads, “I Tried, But It Died.” Then I’d hide in my house and hope everyone could just understand.
About a hundred times, maybe even a thousand …
Only problem is I’d need at least a dozen such signs to memorialize my efforts in various parts of the yard, where Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter feasted on my Asiatic lilies, where squirrels had their way with my spendy Gerbera daisies, where I sat down and all but cried and wondered how other people manage to go on, really.
Then I hit upon something exquisitely beautiful. If you are a real gardener, you might want to forsake me now, to avert your eyes from the heresy I am about to espouse. My friends, this year, I must report to you, with more than a modicum of pride, how my biggest success story of summer was having found the cutest plastic flowers, like ever.
Yes, I said PLASTIC flowers. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?
Passing by the dollar store one day, I heard them call my name from the window, these lovely, leggy lilies, in at least three different colors, all lined up in a big box. I simply had to investigate.
Do you believe in soulmates? Generally speaking, I’m a negative there, but this was love at first sight. These “flowers” were meant for me, and I was meant for them. The best part? The stems were pencil thin — all the more authentic — and the actual flowers, which had a rubbery, realistic texture, were attached by a tiny spring, allowing them to bob and sway and fool even the most professional peepers. Don’t you judge me with your judgy eyes. Only when you get good and close can you see the spring and know for sure.
Now I know what you’re thinking — I’m a mentalist, don’t you know? — and it is this: Oh, YOU would know. Best I not even bother to try to fool the not-foolish you. Well, you know what? Maybe you would know, but I’m OK with that. Because now you also know where I’m coming from anyway. Now you feel my pain, or a bit of it, I hope.
At least if I’ve done my job well hosting this little end-of-summer, online pity party, you do.
If not, I invite you over and ask you just to help me. Come to my aid, oh, ye of greener thumb, please! My good neighbors simply cannot do it all.
“To you from failing hands I throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.”
About a dozen days remain before yet another solstice. Then the perky plastic flowers will have to come inside. And, yikes, what next? Why, nothing but my favorite time of year, I do declare: hardy-mum season. I’ll buy them in bulk, and I’ll “plant” them in pots aplenty. I’ll consider each roadside Amish vendor I meet nothing less than a beautiful blessing, as I repeat my favorite autumnal mantra:
That which we cannot kill can only make us stronger.
Hey, good lookin’ …
~ SJS (AMDG)
“Your first job is to prepare the soil. The best tool for this is your neighbor’s garden tiller. If your neighbor does not own a garden tiller, suggest that he buy one.” — DAVE BARRY
by SANDRA SNYDER 