here's what i love: growing things, here's what i hate: growing things

so one of my friends cleverly does her status as, "here's what i love and here's what i hate" all the time.  it's such a fun way of summing up a day or a situation.  often she would do "roses and thorns" with her kids over dinner before she started doing her facebook status updates that way (and maybe they still do...just haven't done dinner with them in a while, sad.).  which if you are unfamiliar with roses and thorns it's the same sort of thing, rose: what did you like about the day, thorns: what didn't you like about the day.  all that to say i often find myself thinking in those terms about something.  so the title of my note comes out of that...

so, i hate gardening.  not sure how many other supporters of that statement are out there but it's never been my favorite.  but let me tell you how much i love plants, flowers, bushes, trees, grass...other green or growing things...love, love, love!  so my cure to this obvious dilemma is to by cut flowers and live in houses where other people are in charge of the gardening. ;)  and yet somehow i find myself living in a rented house and still doing the gardening (our landlady is sneaky!  not sure how she talked us into that!).  for the most part that means we have to "mow" the grass.  i put mow in quotation marks because we don't really mow it.  it is such a small patch of grass that a law mower is not necessary.  steve uses a weed-eater on the whole thing!  and it only takes 15 minutes, maybe.

yes folks this is our "garden". here in sa, garden is used in the same way we americans would say "yard". :)

but the rest of the "garden" (that's what the south africans call a yard) is flower beds with no flowers...sad.  i've just been living with it because why sink a bunch of money into flower beds that you're renting??  and also, did i mention, i hate gardening??  so recently my solution to this problem is 2 fold.  part 1 of the plan is to "steal" plants.  i don't think it's bad, i haven't really decided.  but i walk thru the neighborhood and when there's a plant that seems to be under-appreciated, growing outside the fence, extra-large or something i just grab it.  (is that wrong?  i'm sorry if it is.  i'm still under the impression that's it not.  let me know tho.  i can stop.)  and part 2 of the plan was to entertain aaron.  he seems to really like watering things.  i think my mom got him hooked when we were in the states in june and july.  so i thought, well, i'd be entertaining him anyway might as well be productive at the same time.  so we drag out the hose and the watering-can and we water all our plants.

so far i feel our results are slow coming.  so i rather hate "growing things."  i seem to get little or no development.  i think i've killed a few things, and other things don't seem to be multiplying like i thought they might.  at the same time weeds seem to crop up everywhere!  why is it weeds are the only things that seem to be able to grow without any effort.  so i hate those "growing things" too.  because instead of revealing in the fact that i have lovely things that have just popped up into my garden all on their own and they need no help from me to survive; i have to use extra effort and try to get rid of them!  what kind of cruel twisted fate is this?

duhn da da duhn...super lawn mower man!!

so all those gardeners out there...i'm sorry.  this is not the note for you.  but for everyone else that has ever struggled to accomplish a "garden" and failed or got frustrated in the process, fist-bumps for you!  we're bros for life. ;)

[reposted from Diana's Facebook page / Oct 11, 2011]