You know, I don't mind winter so much, but I don't like to be teased with spring and then repeatedly slapped down. It reminds me of an old Bill Cosby routine I remember from way back when (o sometimes I so date myself). He was describing a teasing woman, saying " C'mere, c'mere, c'mere, c'mere... get away, get away, get away, get away." That's what the weather is doing to us.
T.S. Eliot was wrong. At least in Oklahoma, February is the cruelest month. By April, the damned weather has made up its mind. But February, oh, no. You never know what you're going to get. But the spring teases are cruel... so cruel!
The garden center has Jackson and Perkins roses for sale, and little grape, raspberry and blueberry plants all wrapped up in their little tubes of plastic, with hopeful sprouts of green leaves reaching out from their tops. Seeds are on sale. The air smells like earth and sky and water on those days when it's warm. And then
SLAM! Bitch-slapped back into winter. Ouch. Oh, the humanity.
I have big plans for the garden this year.
I plan for something to live.
Yes, ambitious, I am. I want to plant something that actually survives the season. So far, I've had terrible luck. And I always thought of myself as a "gardener," even flattered myself that I inherited some part of my great-grandmother's green thumb. But not at this house. At this house, I've killed everything I planted. Three years we've been here, and I've been through two full growing seasons with almost no success.
First I killed a row of hydrangeas. Then I killed several transplanted peonies (never a good idea). Then I killed a whole bed of perrenial plants. I've killed whole vegetable gardens full of food, with the exception of banana peppers, which only a real frost will kill. I killed a rose bush, six bushes with pretty purple flowers that didn't live long enough for me to remember the name, a flat of impatiens, and a potted hibiscus pruned into a tree. I also killed at least a dozen lavender plants, which thrive in poor soil with no water. What next?
This past summer, to add insult to injury, the one plant that I could get to grow was a hyacinth bean vine that grew like mad, choking out everything in the flower bed along the fence like a kudzu vine, then rambling over the gate and onto the deck and choking out everything growing in the pots there, and even reaching tendrils across the deck to entwine the patio chairs and table... but never produced a single flower or seed pod. Not one. In twenty miles of rapacious vine. Not a single damn bloom. What did I do, I ask you, to deserve this?
The picture at right is a hyacinth bean I cadged from someone else's site. (sorry). It's not mine. It has blooms on it.So.
This year, I plan on planting something that will survive. Anything. Just so long as it lives the whole season and returns the next year. That is key. It won't be a success until next spring.
I'm ready. I'm waiting and eager to get my hands in the dirt. Just put me in, coach.
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