A garden full of thoughts...or something like that

There is something about gardening that it teaches me in many, many ways. Some ways are more profound than others. Some are simple life lessons.

The simple life lesson of late that I have discovered is that yes, April, you are in fact a flake. Sad, but true. Just ask anyone to whom I have ever owed money. ;-) This is my third summer as an American gardener, and I have at last come to peace with the fact that I am best suited to about 95% perennial gardening. I am just too much of a flake to deal with fussy annuals every year. Plants that are hardy and sprout themselves every spring are The Thing for me.

There is a garden center about 10 minutes from my house that has been family owned and operated for over 60 years, and all their plants are grown with organic fertilizers and no pesticides. Yayness! The only sad thing is that they are only open from March to July. Whoever would've thought that a planting season could end in July?! Not this sub-tropical baby. The garden center's last day is this Saturday, and all their plants are buy two, get one free. Can't pass up them sales, eh? My mom and I bustled over there bright and early this morning to partake of the saleness. I built up my perennial collection with Scabiosa, Canterbury Bells, Asters, creeping Phlox, and a big fat Echinacea.

I really really really wanted one (or, more specifically three...it WAS buy two, get one free, after all) of their delicious rosebushes, but I restrained myself. I have absolutely, positively, incontrovertibly no place to put one more rosebush, much less three. They were the most delicious climbing roses, too. ::sigh:: But...another thing I have learned in my gardening endeavors is that greediness when it comes to plants is just as unhealthy as greediness in any other area of life. Buying plants with no appropriate place to put them just makes me end up with a jungle of poor, weak, pathetic plants and less money in the bank. It's far better to buy only what you know you have space for and have a few beautiful, healthy plants. And so it is in life in general.

Isn't gardening educational?