Saturday, October 8, 2011

Garden Fail

I’ve always enjoyed gardening.  When I was a child, my parents always let me have a little garden of my own, to plant petunias, marigolds, and other plants hardy enough to withstand clumsy handling.  When I was 17 or 18, I moved on to planting some perennials, some of which survive to this day.

So now that I had a whole four square feet of land outside my front door, I was eager this summer to pull out the weeds, and replace them with flowers; my own take on urban beautification. But away from the influence of my parents’ green thumbs, this garden was a near failure.

My black-eyed susans never bloomed.  My coneflowers were eaten by rabbits.  My salvia (no, not the hallucinogenic kind) grew all wonky, instead of straight and tall.  The pre-existing bleeding hearts withered away and died.

The only thing to flourish?  Potted petunias.

I guess I’m back to square one.

7 comments:

The Sisters' Hood said...

But you tried!
Your bio cracked me up since this morning I am not even sure I have 10% working ...

Lizbeth said...

I'm right there with you. Even some of my shrubs died this year. I gave up in August when that happened. Sigh.

Angela@BeggingTheAnswer said...

@By Word of Mouth Musings - I only have that 10% working if I have coffee.

@Lizbeth - I totally gave up around August as well. Oh well, there's always next year!

Janie Jones said...

Petunias are just barely not a weed. I have determined that they will grow anywhere and in anything. Luckily they are pretty.

This I think was a crummy year everywhere. Petunias are the only things that did very well in my yard, too. Our spring was so late it took forever for our veggies to come in, then it got cold and we lost 90% if them. Better luck next year.

Marianna Annadanna said...

Oh, I'm sorry about your garden. My mom is an obsessive gardener, but I just pretend I like it. I fix everything up in the Sping and then fully ignore it all summer.

Anonymous said...

This year was another bad one. Was going great, but I went out of town for a week and our housesitter didn't water anything. Came back and the sweet mint and oregano were dried up, the squash and watermelon were destroyed by squash borers, 200 or so blueberries that were close to ripe were eaten by something, and so were the 7 pears. All I have left are bare blueberry bushes, some rosemary, and some basil. I can almost make pesto.

Angela@BeggingTheAnswer said...

@Janie - There's always next year!

@Marianna - I gave up weeding and everything by July.

@Joshua - sounds like it was a tough garden yrat for lots of people.