Not the Brightest Bulb
If you, for some reason, have found yourself wondering about the state of my gardening skills, let me try and sum it up for you:
I am such a rotten gardener that the plants I try and kill end up thriving.
A little stage setting is perhaps in order. When we moved into this house last year, the front walk had a small garden to the side of it, in which numerous plants were converting carbon dioxide to oxygen and generally having a merry old time. These plants didn’t totally appeal to Pattie and me, and quite frankly we weren’t sure exactly how each one was supposed to be maintained, but as new homeowners we had many, many other fish to fry – not least of which was that the back yard contained some truly tenacious plant forms that I am still unconvinced did not originate from another planet. (I’ve been checking the Mars Rover pictures very closely to see if I can find any of these things’ forebears, let me tell you.) So we neglected that front yard for a month or two.
This was exactly the opportunity a battalion of weeds had been waiting for. They started sprouting, and pretty soon they were starting to crowd us off that front walk. Another week or two, I think they would have evolved legs, crawled out of the dirt, and body-blocked us from getting into the house. So one morning I dutifully went out and yanked every piece of greenery I could find. I pulled, I dug, I yanked, and when I was done I sprayed that dirt repeatedly with Super Duper Weed and Plant Killer. Then, and only then, I replanted the ground with grass seed.
And not any grass seed, mind you. No, I consulted experts like my parents. Now, the house I grew up in had, and I am being totally honest here, one of the nicest back yards on my block. It damned well better, since my mom kicked us out of the nice air-conditioned house on many a summer day to cut grass or pull weeds or prune hedges or whatever the heck one does in a garden. So I thought I was on pretty safe ground getting a recommendation from them. “Get ryegrass,� they said. What the heck, I said, if the lawn doesn’t work out, I can toss the leftover seed in my bread machine.
Ah, but one can’t just buy grass seed. One must buy fertilizer! Very well, I figured, how hard can this be? The packages are color coded! There’s a helpful chart on the back! Wait a second – why on Earth do I need to use five different kinds of fertilizer? What kind of subtle variations are there in the recipe? Hmm. Considering one of the main ingredients in fertilizer, maybe I don’t want to think too much about that. At any rate, I bought my seed, my fertilizer, my spreader, and a manual lawn mower. (Gas or electric would simply have been overkill.) I planted my seeds, watered them zealously, and actually got a fairly decent carpet of green going. By now, fall was setting in, so I had about a week to enjoy my new lawn before it up and died. No matter, though, come spring I’d enjoy its glorious rebirth.
Except there were a few horticultural time bombs lurking in the ground waiting for their rebirth, too. A month or so ago, flowers started poking their way up from the ground. These bulbs were deep enough or dormant enough or just plain lucky enough that the Super Duper Weed and Plant Killer was neither super nor duper enough. At some point, I’ll go try and dig them up. I’ll probably have to replant some grass seed. Which means the fertilizer that’s color coded for April probably won’t work. But I’ll be in touch with nature, darn it! It’ll be relaxing!
Then again, maybe this whole endless cycle is just part of the natural gardening order. I still recall a conversation I had with my dad once upon a time. Our yard had a slope in the back, the lowest part of which was home to a small strawberry patch. My dad decided to cut out the center section of this patch, to extend the lawn a little and provide a spot for a garden wall. I much preferred the strawberries, but I was around eight at the time, so my vote didn’t have a whole lot of sway. My dad, despite very little wall-building experience, took this project upon himself, and dug out the slope and a trench for the wall. Since I had already begun my career in Not Letting Things Go, I decided to once again register my disapproval of the project:
ME: So why do you want to build a wall again?
DAD: To keep the dirt from falling into this hole.
ME: Um, then why’d you dig the hole?
DAD: So I could put up a wall.
ME: Well, that clears that up then.
There’s a lesson here. I’m just still not sure what, other than that one should have a damn good reason for uprooting perfectly good strawberries.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.