My Mom had a “Green Thumb” and I don’t, and other ranting.

Well, how is that for a header?  I remember that my Mom would find a stick on the side of the road, (in some gutter, in the middle of a sprawling city), plant it in some dirt around our house, and it would grow!! When I tried it, it would stand there week after week, looking at me mockingly, “What are you doing? You can’t plant a stick in the ground and expect me to grow” and I swear it would have a frown on its face. Well, to make a long story short, my Mom would look at it and smile at me, take it out of the ground, stick it back in, (same place), and darn if it didn’t grow into some exotic (wonderful) “thing”, that had leaves and everything.  I think back now and hoped it wasn’t illegal…LOL!  I do have to remind you, I was only 5 years old.  Well, anyway, just to tell you growing up; our house had a bunch of, very fruitful, plants and tree.  We had nectarine, avocado, apricot, peach, pomegranate, fig, 4 types of plums, white and dark grapes, and orange and lime trees, roses, all types of flowers and a green lawn.  It was a virtual “Garden of Eden”.  And here, I am, (69 years old) I can’t grow Zucchini (anyone, can grow zucchini!!).  That is the story of my long (gardening career) life.  The nurseries around town love me, I think they can see, printed on my forehead (I can’t grow poop!) and they smile and say, “Come on in, we would love to help you” while they are all wringing their hands and chuckling under their breath, (looking like the a bunch of merchants of Venice), when I rang up the last purchase and drive away, (I swear) they look at each other and laughed, I ended up with about 25 seedling, fertilizer (guaranteed to grow poop…LOL), and anything they said I needed to be successful.  Yah what a Joke…I have read a ton of books on how to plant a “successful” garden and sow the fruits of your hard labor (at least that is what I hear).  Well, (guess what), after all of the years of memories, garden books; planting seasons, fertilizers, equipment, and a lot of water, I can finally grow… GRASS!!! Well, I did notice a few thistles here and there, a few dandelions here and there, maybe, more here than there….Don’t you feel sorry for me.  At least my wife has a green thumb (darn it!) Now off onto another one of my tangents, my lawn! Don’t you just love it when you stand there with a satisfied look on your face, on how your lawn, (your crowning achievement), looks so beautiful, and the aroma after being mowed.  I have even been seen stretching out on the lawn, with my gardening gloves on, looking at a leaf of grass, clipped it with my gardening scissors; to make it to match the height of the rest of the grass, then go sit down on my porch and smile with feelings of success and amazement of my achievement, sipping my lemonade, and then while I was looking around admiring the grandeur, my eyes would stop and go wide with fear and said to myself “NO”!!! My next door neighbor had a field of dry dirt and weeds about a mile high, (yes, I measured), I would run over there and stand, looking at all of the dandelions which had reached their “peak” of maturity and had their little “white” seeds floating, (unceremoniously)  onto my yard!! I thought to myself (wringing my hands), what can I do? I stood there looking (deflated), back and forth with crazed eyes, saying a few expletives, (you know, the kind when you stub your toe and jump around the house expletives), thinking to myself how can I “gracefully”, (yah right!), tell my neighbor, who I never see outdoors, with their blinds (perpetually closed), to clean up their “field of weeds”.  I thought to myself, I would take a few black plastic trash bags and walk over to their house and wrap them around their door knob and walk away. I have to (shamelessly) tell you I did.  Well, guess what, it worked, the wife came out and cut down all of the weeds and stacked them neatly in little rows….AND LEFT THEM THERE!!! For about a month, of course, they blew back into my yard and grew up another batch of weed.  I finally gave up, and ignored them.  One day to my amazement they had some watering sprinklers installed, and some sod rolled out.  It was wonderful!  Then, they sold their house and moved.  Of course, the house stood their unsold for about a year and the lawn went to hell.  I finally gave up, had my lawn sprayed with weed killer every few months.  I still have my lawn cut, regularly.  The “new” owners next door are never outside, they keep their blinds closed and the lawn is (again) a field of weeds.  Just a few weeks ago they did go around with a lawn mower and cut down the patches of dandelions (which grew back), and what little grass they had, I think they sprayed.  Oh well, all I can do is hope.  THE END…or is that just the beginning. LOL