What’s All This Green Stuff?

It’s FINALLY feeling like summer might actually occur here in Wisconsin. Bulbs are blooming, grass is growing and leaf buds are preparing to explode open. Hooray! Things don’t look dead anymore!

Since it was a lovely afternoon on Sunday, I decided to “carpe diem” and head outdoors. After all, my neighbor, who is a member of the local garden club, has already banked at least 100 hours “tidying up” her pristine flower beds while taking momentary breaks to curse us and our weedy mess. I literally could see a look of relief and hope in her eyes when I walked towards our garden with a shovel and wheelbarrow.

Now, having earned a degree in horticulture and having put said degree to good use for a few years, I know a thing or two about gardening. Things like: professionals call it “soil,” not “dirt,” some college professors make you taste the plants you’re learning about and a career in this field typically means you’re continuously coated in dirt and sweat, which generally, I was always okay with.

When confronted with an overwhelming project, which is exactly what our backyard is, I also learned that it’s best to attack unruly plants with a thoughtfully created game plan. This was my gardening strategy of the day:

Step One: Realize that all my old grubby work clothes no longer come up past my thighs thanks to the cherubic baby I am growing. Raid Joey’s work clothes for something to wear. Settle on a pair of sweatpants that look like ankle-length adult diapers. Squeeze into an old pre-pregnancy t-shirt and head outdoors. Acknowledge that the birds and squirrels are laughing at you.

Step Two: Extract gardening tools and gloves from cobwebs in garage.

Step Three: Spend several minutes staring at the nightmare that is your backyard. Quietly apologize to your Martha Stewartesque neighbor for being a slacker and hope she never learns that you actually have a degree in plant maintenance.

Step Four: Use your shovel to cut an edge around the flower bed to help prevent the grass from creeping in. Here’s an illustration:

You just sink the shovel into the soil at the very edge of the bed and tilt it up, dislodging the grass and weeds beginning to explore the boundaries of your flower bed. Then pull out the loosened weeds and grass and sprinkle the remaining soil into the flower bed, leaving a trench between the bed and your lawn. That trench impedes a plant’s ability to creep into a place it’s not wanted.

Step Five: Continually fight the powers of gravity, which are commanding your pregnant belly to pull you face first into the dirt. I mean “soil.”

Step Six: Cut an edge down the middle of the garden to keep this mess of weeds…

…from invading more than they already have. Tell yourself that maybe someday you’ll actually install that little brick patio you’ve been planning for the space.

Step Six: Trot back inside every 15 minutes to go to the bathroom and get a drink. And probably a snack, too.

Step Seven: Hear your neighbor of 5 years call you Loretta yet again. Decide you’ve let her call you this too many times to correct her now. Accept that you have allowed yourself to adopt a less-than-appealing nickname.

Step Eight: Get incredibly excited when you unearth two toy soldiers from the dirt. Proclaim to the plants around you that you would’ve made a remarkable archaeologist because surely this is just what it felt like to find King Tut’s tomb.

Step Nine: Try to stand up to admire your hard work. Realize you’re experiencing an entirely new kind of back pain that forces you to crawl to a shovel and use it like a cane to pull your butt up out of the dirt. Smile anyways, because it feels so good to be outside working and getting dirty. Debate whether or not you’re up for doing it two days in a row.

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