People walk past my house all the time in my neighborhood and stop to admire my small garden (primarily the front and side of my house and my containers).  Sometimes they ask me “How do you do it?”.  I always have to stop myself from saying “It’s helps to be psychotically obsessive”.  What I usually say is more diplomatic along the lines of “I water a lot” or “it’s my hobby” but the truth is a bit darker I’m afraid.  I am obsessed with plants, flowers in particular.  While everyone agrees it’s good to have a hobby, sometimes I think I take it a bit too far.  A few of the things that exemplify this:

—I don’t like to go on vacation during growing season because I don’t like leaving my plants

—I would never get a dog because dogs can dig and one of my neighbors is always telling me about the destruction her crazy German shepherd is wrecking on her backyard (he ate all my petunias!  He ate the baby Aspen tree! etc..) I know I would probably have palpitations should such a thing occur in my yard so I just steer clear.  Fortunatley my kid only likes cats.

—I wanted a house with a very small yard because I knew if I got a house with even a medium sized yard I would probably drive myself insane (I do a pretty good job as it is with a lot of around 4500 sq feet).

—I’ve run out in golf ball sized hail to protect my container plants

—In May and June, I went to at least 8 different nurseries (multiple times each) looking for exactly the plants I wanted

—I was shocked when a fellow less hard core gardener in my neighborhood hadn’t thought about the annuals we might put in our pocket park.  It was March when I asked her.

 Exhibit A

Last year I spotted a pair of American goldfinches in my neighborhood.  They are beautiful birds with a lovely song, so I bought a special birdfeeder to try to entice them back this year.  I put up the birdfeeder in April and to my delight it worked, a pair of goldfinches started hanging around the feeder in May. I’ve been enjoying seeing them all year until yesterday when I saw them violently assaulting my gerbera daisies.

I have a large cattle trough on my deck filled with gerbera daisies that I wait very patiently to flower.  Sometimes it can take a few weeks between flower bursts, but I consider it worth it because I love their colors and how big the flowers are.  When they do flower, the flowers last quite a long time (two to three weeks).  Yesterday morning I was cleaning the kitchen and noticed the goldfinch pair that I usually see in front of my house at the feeder.  I stopped dead in my tracks in shock when I notcied what they were doing: hanging off the stems of the gerberas and dissecting brand new blossoms into tiny little pieces looking for seeds.

I didn’t know what to do–there was an ironic conflict going on in my head.  Finally I could stand seeing them pulling out petals no longer and went onto the deck and shooed them away.  Then I realized what must have happened.  Those little buggers were blackmailing me to fill up the bird feeder, which was running low.  So I’ve filled it hoping they will leave my flowers alone–but if they don’t, let’s just say I’m going to have to reevaluate our relationship.

January: Grow the last of the winter amaryllis. Get royal pissed off when amaryllis ordered from fancy amaryllis breeder in Florida are not the Orange Sovereign you ordered (which matches your decorating scheme) but pink striped flowers which are nice but pedestrian.  Stare wistfully out window imagining trees with leaves on them.  Dream about the smell of pansies.

February: Obsessivley peruse seed catalogs.  Look at old photos of gardens from years past again and again to remember what they were like and what you liked about the color combinations.  Visit the butterfly pavilion which has a huge indoor greenhouse because you miss the smell of dirt.

March: Look every day for swelling buds on the crabapples.  Once they get large enough take shears and cut off several branches for indoor forcing.  Explain why you smash the end of the branches to your husband who is not in the least interested.  Check the nursery across the street every day as you drive by for the first pansies.  Buy two six packs the second they appear (March 21st).

April: Watch the daffodils grow, delight in the tulip buds breaking from the soil, you planted them last fall and they said they were orange–they better be.  Imagine what you will do to the rabbit that eats them.  Trim up all the perennials, notice how the Rose of Sharon looks so much like a dead twig but you know it isn’t so leave it alone.  Threaten husband not to pick ANYTHING unless asking you first what it is–he thinks everything not growing in the exact spot it was planted is a weed.

May: Try to wait until that frost free date (around May 10th), but never make it.  Come home with flats and flats of annuals on May 3rd.  Start planting containers.  They take more than a week to finish. When neighbor sees you pulling up to the front of the house and unloading flowers for the fourth time in two days, says you need an intervention.

June: Not happy with your own garden, add perennials to the pocket park down the street.  Yell at neighbor who lets dog piss on them.

July: Water containers twice a day.  Assess perennials and pull stuff out you don’t like, add new stuff because you can’t help yourself.

August: Relax to enjoy your efforts, watch hummingbird feed at the lobelia in your hanging baskets.

September: Think how much you like asters, you really should plant more but don’t have the room.

October: Assess which perennials look good in the fall–plumbago has the nicest red leaves.  Buy fall pansies even though you know for a fact they will most likely freeze solid.

November: For two days am relieved not to have to water, fertilize, or deadhead anything, then start thinking about what annuals you will plant next year.  Start amaryllis so they bloom in time for Christmas.

December: Go to fantastic orchid greenhouse and buy $30 orchid you will kill in two months, is the one plant you can’t seem to take care of.

Dear Lawn,

What the hell do you want from me?  I aerate, fertilize, weed, mow, trim, use $60 of water on you a month and you still look like crap.  You only exist because of my HOA and if I find a way around that, you are dead I’m telling you.  I sweat and worry and you give me a lackluster performance which is embarrassing. I have a master’s in ecology–specifically grass ecology, don’t you know that? And I’m a gardener to boot, you are damaging my street cred in the ‘hood.   You take more work than all my perennials combined and you are only about 1,000 square feet.   I specifically chose a house in a new urbanist neighborhood with small lawns because I don’t need the stress of trying to maintain a species that needs three times the amount of precipitation we get here in the semi-arid grassland of the Front Range.  So you know what?  I give up.  You can look bad if you want, I’ll spend the time I save not working on you on my pretty flowers such as indian blanket that know how to treat a person who loves them. Screw you, lawn.

I have always hated garden gnomes.  I’ve viewed them as prototypical objects of American kitsch along with howling coyotes in any form (if you are from the Southwest you know exactly what I mean), chainsaw bears with a “Wipe Yer Paws” sign (if you live in the mountains), and the eternal syrup–foisted on every women in the 30s-80s demographic who reads shelter or women’s magazines– of Thomas Kinkade, “Painter of Light”.  However, Ikea changed my mind (slightly).