2004-3-15 12:53 a.m.
The Reluctant Gardener
Ahh, gardening. Little old ladies in giant sunhats, wearing dainty little gloves, gently turning dirt with their dainty little spades, lovingly patting flowers into their flowerbeds. Right?
Wrong. Ow, ow, oh so wrong.
I take back anything mocking I may have said about gardening, especially anything mocking about the idea that it's exercise.
My front yard is a strange amalgam of jungle plants, juniper, ice plant and rocks. Six tons of rocks, as I was told one day by the old guy down the street, who put in the landscaping for the previous owner. (I was out front hacking away at the juniper bushes one day when he shuffled up, and in between the stories of his life as a contortionist before his stroke and the deliberate overplanting of the bushes, he let that little factoid slip. I think I did an admirable job of holding onto my hedge shears and keeping my sob on the inside.)
In any case, I don't like any of the landscaping and want it gone. But unless I'm willing to shell out tons of money (because six tons of rock won't fit in the trunk of a two-seater, no matter how efficiently you pack it) and/or get my house on Curb Appeal, I'm going to have to do the work myself. There's also the matter of offending the Jungle Gardener, which I'd rather not do; he is a nice guy despite his somewhat batty plant choices. Having one person gradually adding life to the garden is less likely to offend than a team of burly guys tying plants to the back up their pickups and burning rubber trying to uproot them. So now I've having to actually learn to grow things so I don't have to live with an ugly yard, when my prior gardening experience consists largely of killing houseplants. (Why can't plants complain when they need something like my cat does? It would make things so much easier for all involved.)
To this end, TheBoy and I went to the nursery this weekend and picked out some f lowers that are supposedly difficult to kill. I wanted to plant said flowers i n a bed that looks like it's gone unused for years. So I needed to rip up the weeds and mix some peat m oss into the heavy clay soil so the plants would actually have a little drainage.
The section I was working on was 12 or 15 square feet. I was trying to go a foo t to a foot and a half down. After the weeding, I got halfway through the digging and calle d it a day after about two hours with the shovel.
Ass HURTS. Arms HURT. Legs HURT. Shoulders HURT. WAAAAH.
And grannies with the frou-frou hats, I will never think of your hobby as placid again.