I love a garden, but have a black thumb, you might even say a goth thumb, a Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi appendage. I possess an underworldly ability to bring death to living plants by my gaze. My husband, being a biologist, is in charge of the house plants, yet he, too, is cursed in the plant arena. Rivulets of water run across our floors and under rugs after he's made his rounds. Death by drowning. Or rather, there is drought, then flood. Very biblical, but counter productive. He also operates the automatic watering system, which constantly needs tweaking, and seems to be almost, how shall I say it? Emotional. If the system is in a good mood, it gets most plants, but there are those out-of-favor bushes and flowers that must fend for themselves. It's a dog eat dog world after all.
I have enthusiasms accompanied by amnesia, during which times I buy dozens of primroses and a baby tree or camellia bush, enchanted by the picture of the flowers it will produce, plant them too shallowly and without enough potting soil surrounding them, and then forget about them until I notice they've transformed into dried flower arrangements. I can't keep my focus.
Do we have a gardener? Of course we do. But I live where my gardener earns more than I do, so I only can afford him a few hours a month. He does his best, and probably weeps at night when he thinks about our yard. We have so many trees, each not well pruned and dumping debris all over his blowing and raking. We're a jungle out there, and he does his best to hack away at the wilderness. Wisely, we do not have any grass, due to the utter destruction our two dogs inflict upon the back yard. We have a rule never to plant anything new in the back. We have a few planters with azaleas and rhrododenrons, but they are only safe as long as our female dog condescends to allow them life. If she's in a bad mood, she rips out a plant and tears it to shreds. It seems to calm her down and make her temporarily happy. We've tried reasoning with her, but, well, she's just not reasonable.
So all the hope for the garden rests with the small front yard, with is modicum of sun, and there definitely has been progress, because the gardener is now proactive and plants flowers on his own and then bills us, or maybe neighbors secretly water and drain when we're not around, to keep up property values. Or it could be it's just spring. But things are looking good, real good, if my husband and I can just keep a hands-off attitude, and we continue receiving occasional rains. As for the inside plants, pray for them. After all, at this point, we're too old to change our ways.
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