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My Profile
Because I can't bear to eulogize Doug - 2008-08-19
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9:42 p.m. - 2003-07-20
Hi, my name is LA and I'm a Geranium-aholic. I can't stop! I need to check in at the Miracle-Grow rehab center. And you know geraniums are just the gateway flower. Sure, what's the harm in a geranium or two? So you innocently plop a couple of geraniums in the yard. It feels pretty good. You get a couple more to kind of balance things out. Then the next thing you know you're into begonias, and petunias, and finally you hit bottom and start in with the impatiens. Good Lord, I must be blacking out, too. When I came to in Lowes parking lot this morning I not only had all the aforesaid demons in my cart, but there were Shasta daisies and polka-dot Vinca too. AND 70 pounds of potting soil, plus 3 window boxes and the necessary hardware, but it was the couple curly iron and stained glass plant hanging doohickeys which truly frightened me. Those are surely a sign of coming garden tacky Armageddon. Another couple weeks in this spin-out and I’ll be chuckling with glee over my Granny Fannies and nifty garden gnomes (even the one with the wheelbarrow!) and slapping “Gardeners Do It in the Dirt” bumper stickers on my cars. It’s a sickness, I tell you. I’m no gardener by nature. Those evil geraniums started me down this path of degradation and grimy knuckles. Previous to the geraniums my most serious involvement with plants was a huge Wandering Jew I had in high school. I won it by accident at a Penny Social. (I was shooting for the martini shaker and tools and put the ticket in the wrong cup.) So I had this plant. I named it Harold and it hung in my bedroom window for a couple years. Eventually Harold grew so snaky and viney I was able to drape all his fronds in big loops over the curtain rod and finally had some privacy. Our lascivious elderly next-door neighbor, Mr. Godzilla, used to pretend to trim his hedges (at night!) so he could watch me get ready for bed. For the two years previous to Harold I undressed in the dark because my mother refused to buy curtains which actually closed together. She’d bought these skimpy jute sack ones which were only 9” wide and afforded scant privacy for my 5 foot wide windows. She did it as punishment for choosing a wall color she didn’t like when I decorated my bedroom. Sicilian Mafiosi are rank amateurs when it comes to blood vendettas and revenge, my mother was the crowned Queen of Get Even. She was so pissed about the paint color she brought in a burlap bedspread too. It was a mercy we weren’t allowed to have friends over. What could I have said about why my bedspread was printed all over with “Boise’s Best”? Anyhow, my plant thing has gotten totally out of hand. I racked up my back so badly this afternoon that I can hardy walk. Stooping, squatting, digging, hauling, hoeing, if I’m hurting this big already you know I must be dreading the morrow. But the house is looking so great! The new front door made such a change for the better that I’ve been inspired, digging and planting like a mad thing to get the rest of the front yard looking as spiff as possible too. It must be working. Early on this year Mike’s buddy, Ken, came over to help Mike pull out the old furnace. Last evening Ken was meeting Mike at the new house so they could use one car while they went out roistering. Ken drove past the house twice before deciding it MUST be our place even though it didn’t look much like he remembered, it’s so pretty now! SIL and family came up today and while she and I were filling window boxes and the terracotta hanging baskets, BIL and Mike were building shelves and a boot rack inside the front porch. Gorgeous. They turned out gorgeous. I hadn’t paid any attention to the planking Mike bought yesterday (too busy drooling over the weed whacker I’d picked out) and was pleasantly surprised to find out he’d bought cedar planks, not the junk pine I thought I’d end up painting. The cedar is lovely and the porch smells like a hope chest. The boot rack I’d sketched out turned out great too. No more muddy work boots and drippy snow boots leaving clods and puddles everywhere. All the hats and mittens go in the boot rack too, built in on both ends are small side tables with drawers. I REALLY have to get a digital camera and show y’all this cool stuff. If only I could stop buying flowers I’m sure I could afford one. But the siren song of those damn geraniums is just too alluring to ignore. Jonesin’ for mulch, ~LA
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