The BBW Gardening Chronicles

I mentioned a while back that I decided to take up gardening again...which is totally insane given where my life is at the moment.  Like if I don't feel like pulling weeds, why am I planting more stuff into the ground?

Which is why I am gardening in containers!  And another cheat--getting plants that were already started at the nursery instead of starting my own from seed.  Yes, I should be ashamed, but I'm not since that is precisely the reason why they sell those pre-started plants anyway.  For busy folks like me who did not start their tomatoes in April, these will do the trick just fine, thank you very much.

Besides, there are plenty of good reasons to try my hand at gardening again--I need distractions.  And I need a reason to go out to my backyard so that when I nag the husband about the pile of crap he hasn't cleaned up yet, he cannot retort, "well you never go out there". 

I do plan to eventually weed my yard so that the hippie landscaper who uprooted the overgrown azalea bushes three years ago will be proud of me when he returns to dig up the dead dogwood tree in my front yard.  Since it did not survive last summer's heat despite all of my loving care, I thought I might be able to compensate by showing him that while I may not know how to care for a dogwood (because this is the second one I've killed), at least I can grow some container veggies.

Another reason why I took up gardening again is another writing venture that I started, but abandoned years ago, which is the ghost of my old garden blog (a remnant from the time when I wanted to become an urban Martha Stewart).  Not that I miss writing that blog, but I thought about it the other day and how optimistic I was when I started it.  I had all of these plans of turning my yard into an oasis, but then reality set in--the husband and I are not exactly outdoorsy people.  And even if we did have green thumbs or more adventurous spirits, some of the issues with our yard required professional help.

Such as SAM, the spiky virulent weed that returns every Spring to drive us insane.  Despite all of the husband's valiant efforts with his rusted shears, SAM always gets the best of him by either scratching up his arms and legs, or by growing back even thornier after a good summer rain.  A few years ago it got to the point that I was ready to move because we had the absolute worst yard in the neighborhood, so the compromise was hiring the hippie landscaper. 

Of course, SAM is just one annoying problem.  We live in an honest-to-God real-life urban jungle with chipmunks, peach-eating squirrels, fence-jumping deer, hawks and falcons, geese and most recently, a baby rabbit.  A few years ago, we had moles (pests that drove my neighbor to dress in a bee-keeper outfit to smoke them out).  And I cannot leave out the possums, foxes, and the raccoons that overturn Supercans.  Yes, I live in the city...

And I just had a revelation...I will resurrect the garden blog if for no other reason than to have a place to complain about how bad I am at gardening.  Of course, if I get it right, I'll be sure to tell you all about it here.