Garden of Evil

This weekend I fought it out with my gardens for a while.  I'm continually amazed that for a small cottage, my house has so much garden space.  About 75% of it is in shade which makes it a great place for growing weeds, moss, and mushrooms...not so great for flowers. Most years, my Mom comes and gets me motivated to spend the crazy money it costs (not to mention the back breaking labor) to enliven these weed invested spaces. But this year it wasn't in the cards.  Also...a couple of years ago I got a vicious case of poison ivy from my very own gardening activities, so I approach these beds more like a potential bear trap that could easily sever a limb, than like a place of peace and joy.

In my usual way, I joined technology and nature so as to fool myself that I was safely ensconsced in my favorite "dented to fit my ass" couch cushion watching crazy nutters on HGTV rather than being out with bugs, bunnies, and bees myself. What do I mean by this? I mean the iPod was planted firmly in my pocket, buds in ears and volume up on a particularly vicious and non-nature based David Sedaris book. In this way, as I scooped rotting leaves from the swamp that served as topper to my pool cover, forked out all of the never ending vine-like weeds from my garden, and tried for the umpteempth time to return each and every river rock strewn about the property back into the planting beds...I could be...well...someplace else.

Truth be told, I love a beautiful garden....I particularly love it when some other schmuck has chosen all the plantings, done all the weeding, hauled and spread the mulch, trimmed back the overgrown bushes, treated and dug out all the maddening weeds between every damn patio block and paver, and watered, fed, and in other ways managed the jungle mess. If someone else could just do these things, I could do as I was intended to do.  Have a good layabout in the hammock with the smell of flowers and the buzz of busy bees.

While I do engage some help in the lawn care area, for the most part, the garden is my burden to carry. Hubby detests gardening even more than I do. Don't let his love of beautiful flowers fool you. He prefers to go to professionally managed botanical gardens to photograph and then paint his flowers. He has no interest in the dirt under fingernails, sweaty palm to sweaty crotch, blisters and aching back work of actually working a garden.

OooooKkkkkkk. So there you have it. So why is it, distracted by David Sedaris' high-pitched sardonic whining did I find myself attacking nearly every square inch of garden on the property this weekend? Spring fever? Serpent of the garden bite? I don't know. But suffice it to say I've torn out more plants this weekend than I have ever planted and I'm still only halfway done.

Sigh. Our little cottage is quickly becoming the Garden of Evil.