me into Lisa Vanderpump of the Beverly Hills Real Housewives . Yes! Look at me! Life is all rosé and diamonds and hanging out with Camille Grammer! Of course, I’ll have to buy lower-cut bras so I can leave my shirt open to midbreastbone, and I’ll need to find men with Rod Stewart haircuts attractive. Also, I must meet and befriend Camille Grammer, but I can make this work if—
“…and you’ll need to prepare the bed.”
“I’m sorry; I zoned for a second thinking about the ex–Mrs. Frasier Crane. Long story. Anyway, what’d you say?”
“Clean it out. Yank everything up and transfer any plant you think might come back and you want to save. Then till down six inches and break up any root-balls.”
“Whoa, wait, I can’t just dump new dirt on top?”
“No need. What you have is perfect. But you will have to get rid of all the superfluous bits so you can start fresh.”
Yeah.
That’s pretty much the story of my life.
Only with more earthworm killing.
I N EVER P ROMISED Y OU A R OSE G ARDEN
A string of idyllic late-May days pass, all in the low seventies with practically nonexistent humidity. Do I work on clearing the planter bed on those days? Of course not. As is my way, I wait until the last possible moment to address the task, at a time when the sun is fifteen feet overhead and so blazing hot that it’s turning my shovel into molten metal. As I work, I find myself practically blinded because of all the sweat pouring into my eyes.
What I really don’t understand is how these pathetic little shoots have such deep and strong roots. I curse each and every coneflower and butterfly bush as I huff and yank and hurl masses of dirty tendrils into the woods.
Thanks for being a dick, lavender hyssop!
I thought you were cool, bergamot!
How about I give YOU a black eye, Susan?
I’m especially angry when I recall exactly how much I paid for each plant, too.
Maybe I should have just put twenty dollars in the toilet instead, purple lovegrass!
As satisfying as it is to hurl these feckless specimens, I find I have to put Maisy and Libby inside, because each time I successfully chuck a recalcitrant root-ball into the woods, one of my ever-helpful best friends retrieves it.
Argh.
The last time I worked this hard outdoors was when I was a volunteer gardener for the city of Chicago back in 2010. What seemed like an excellent idea on paper went totally sideways in execution. I’d signed up to help an underprivileged neighborhood tend their community plot. The neighborhood association needed volunteers, because no one who lived there actually wanted to help, which should have been my first clue that this was a bad idea.
Ninety percent of my volunteer gardening time was spent picking up empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, and Doritos wrappers, although I did crack up the day I retrieved and reconstructed a whole handful of report card shards from the basil plants. One C, three Ds and an F? Yeah, I’d hide those grades from my parents, too, kid.
The most glorious part of the entire community garden was the chain-link fence separating the garden from the alley. What would have been a sad vista of a downscale Chicago alley was made incredibly beautifulby all the morning glories. The spectacular vines and flowers hid the fence and obscured the view with a mass of greens so dense and thick that the chain link looked like a huge bush that spanned from one side of the triple lot to the other.
Imagine my disappointment when the volunteer coordinator asked me to tear down all the morning glories. Apparently since they were a native plant not specifically cultivated by the garden’s designer, they had to go. I didn’t agree, but it wasn’t my place to argue. (But, oh, how I wanted to!)
So I found myself ripping out some of the most lush, densest flora I’d ever seen, on a ninety-five-degree day in the middle of the city of Chicago. Sweat was running down the crack of my ass and pooling in my ears as I grappled
“…and you’ll need to prepare the bed.”
“I’m sorry; I zoned for a second thinking about the ex–Mrs. Frasier Crane. Long story. Anyway, what’d you say?”
“Clean it out. Yank everything up and transfer any plant you think might come back and you want to save. Then till down six inches and break up any root-balls.”
“Whoa, wait, I can’t just dump new dirt on top?”
“No need. What you have is perfect. But you will have to get rid of all the superfluous bits so you can start fresh.”
Yeah.
That’s pretty much the story of my life.
Only with more earthworm killing.
I N EVER P ROMISED Y OU A R OSE G ARDEN
A string of idyllic late-May days pass, all in the low seventies with practically nonexistent humidity. Do I work on clearing the planter bed on those days? Of course not. As is my way, I wait until the last possible moment to address the task, at a time when the sun is fifteen feet overhead and so blazing hot that it’s turning my shovel into molten metal. As I work, I find myself practically blinded because of all the sweat pouring into my eyes.
What I really don’t understand is how these pathetic little shoots have such deep and strong roots. I curse each and every coneflower and butterfly bush as I huff and yank and hurl masses of dirty tendrils into the woods.
Thanks for being a dick, lavender hyssop!
I thought you were cool, bergamot!
How about I give YOU a black eye, Susan?
I’m especially angry when I recall exactly how much I paid for each plant, too.
Maybe I should have just put twenty dollars in the toilet instead, purple lovegrass!
As satisfying as it is to hurl these feckless specimens, I find I have to put Maisy and Libby inside, because each time I successfully chuck a recalcitrant root-ball into the woods, one of my ever-helpful best friends retrieves it.
Argh.
The last time I worked this hard outdoors was when I was a volunteer gardener for the city of Chicago back in 2010. What seemed like an excellent idea on paper went totally sideways in execution. I’d signed up to help an underprivileged neighborhood tend their community plot. The neighborhood association needed volunteers, because no one who lived there actually wanted to help, which should have been my first clue that this was a bad idea.
Ninety percent of my volunteer gardening time was spent picking up empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, and Doritos wrappers, although I did crack up the day I retrieved and reconstructed a whole handful of report card shards from the basil plants. One C, three Ds and an F? Yeah, I’d hide those grades from my parents, too, kid.
The most glorious part of the entire community garden was the chain-link fence separating the garden from the alley. What would have been a sad vista of a downscale Chicago alley was made incredibly beautifulby all the morning glories. The spectacular vines and flowers hid the fence and obscured the view with a mass of greens so dense and thick that the chain link looked like a huge bush that spanned from one side of the triple lot to the other.
Imagine my disappointment when the volunteer coordinator asked me to tear down all the morning glories. Apparently since they were a native plant not specifically cultivated by the garden’s designer, they had to go. I didn’t agree, but it wasn’t my place to argue. (But, oh, how I wanted to!)
So I found myself ripping out some of the most lush, densest flora I’d ever seen, on a ninety-five-degree day in the middle of the city of Chicago. Sweat was running down the crack of my ass and pooling in my ears as I grappled
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