Garden Plants - Beware

It’s that time of year again when the days are long and sunny; the earth is warm and inviting. The time of year when gardeners both young and old head out to the local nurseries to select the plants that will grace their yards for the next few months. I love to admire the little baby flowers and the supple young tomato vines and dream of growing carrots and radishes that rival the pictures on the front of the seed packets. But all I can do is admire from afar, because my thumbs are not green – they are yellow grey the color of dead plants

With the possible exception of weeds, I seem destine to drain the life out of every piece of vegetation I encounter. My first garden produced a roaring harvest of tall brown grass, prickly weeds, an incredibly tall dandelion and three cherry tomatoes buried down underneath.

Houseplants are even worse. My husband won’t let me grow them anymore after that herbicide massacre thing. It was an innocent mistake! If one tablespoon of fertilizer in a gallon of water was good for my plants, imagine what half a cup of fertilizer in a cup of water would do. I had visions of huge vines of English Ivy wrapping itself around my kitchen while the kids had to push aside long fern tendrils to make their way to the dinner table.

Instead I got to watch my houseplants whither and dye right before my eyes. One minute they were green and healthy, the next they were brown lifeless piles of fibrous debris. Even the little cactus that the lady from the nursery had assured me could withstand almost anything, actually imploded right there in its pot.

The thing is that I do love working in my yard and the beauty that comes from a wide variety of plants and flowers. So this year, I had a plan.

First, I bought a garden statue and placed it in one of my flowerbeds. I figure, no matter what else happens, the pretty little swinging angle was guaranteed to make it through the summer without dying.

Next I spent several hours on the Internet and more hours consulting with experts in the field, searching for the strongest and toughest plants available. Shrubs that could accidentally be backed over by a minivan and still come back to life. Flowers with plenty of blooms for those times when my kids are inspired to surprise me with a bouquet of blossoms. Vegetables flexible enough to deal with a flood of water when the wading pool gets turned over on them, and drought resistant enough for those times I forget to water.

Believe it or not, I now have the perfect garden! My astro-turf is always the perfect shade of green, and I never have to mow it. Rock gardens are more exciting than one would imagine and fake flowers come in a wider variety of colors than the real thing. Best of all, if I prop the hose over the dog’s metal food-dish and turn on the water, it sounds just like a fountain.