By Caroline Clemmons
Isn’t spring wonderful? I love the bright flowers, greening lawns, and budding trees. Spring is second only to Fall for my favorite season. In spite of the sneezing, itchy eyes, and scratchy throat, we are adding plants. We’d love for our yard to look like Beth Trissel’s (who wouldn’t?).
Armed with lists and visions of Beth Trissel’s luxuriant garden, we sally forth to the plant shop. With our trowels raised, we vow we will have the prettiest flowerbeds in the neighborhood. We expect great things.
Forgotten are the failures of the past. Forgotten are the blisters, aching back, and sore limbs. We collect rose bushes, petunias, geraniums, zinnias, decorative grasses, and seeds.
We forgot one other thing—there’s about zero to three inches of soil over limestone in most of our property. Occasional pockets of soil host trees--like those of the neighbor whose trees shade our raised garden beds.. Nevertheless, we won’t be defeated so easily.
We have neither the time nor skill to add more raised flower beds in sunny areas. We gather planters for our plants. We’ll have a potted plant garden. (Potted plants should not be confused with pot plants.)
We scour nurseries and garden shops and gasp at prices. We move on to yard sales, thrift stores, and the Next Door online column. It matters not that our planters don’t match. We are victorious!
Stay safe and keep reading!
You are my kind of plant person! Dollar Tree is a great place to find pots, too. Good luck with your flowers, Caroline.
ReplyDeleteJust being outside and digging in the dirt is good enough for me and my soul. I love spring. If the plants make it, so be it. If they don't, I tried and its...goodbye, my dear flower friends!
ReplyDeleteI bet you're flowers will be beautiful, and it's so wonderful to sit outside, sip your Dr Pepper, and admire the blooms that survive even through heat and drought.
ReplyDeleteWe're going full steam ahead, too. Mr R just built five new raised beds for herbs--I didn't like our situation last year so this is a vast improvement. We just got irrigation water today.