spring is happening. thank god.

A couple of years ago, i planted bulbs in the tiny 'yard' behind our house.  Crocus & tulips mostly.  Those that have survived the low-light, high-traffic location bloom throughout the spring.  They aren't very impressive, there is no color scheme & the still young bulbs do not produce thick stands of blossoms, but i still get excited.  I feel like they are saying, 'You didn't freeze to death! Great job!!'

The bulbs are the only thing that will grow back there.  I am trying (once again) to grow herbs in terra cotta pots.  My plan is to buy several of each & hope extra hard.  I only have one basil, & i only bought the curry & thyme plants because they were cute & smelled nice, but i also have two different types of rosemary (which my being excited about makes for pretty boring blogging, obviously.)

I do not have any pictures of my herbs.  Even the cute ones that smell nice.  I do, however, have picture of the non-food plants in cute containers.  Tropical plants do better than edible plants with the lack of light, so i keep a lot of them around to make me feel better about my other failures.

I plan to donate my greententions, my aspirations of tomatoes & melons & delicious delights, to my friends whose yards are more hospitable.  Like my friend who accompanied me to the nursery & fell in love with the lemon tree.

After a couple coats of gold spray-paint, a layer of moss & violets, i was jealous, but too exhausted to wish i could have fruit trees of my own.

spring? is that you?

Spring has been very slow in arriving this year. Not that i ever enjoy winter, but, when it drags on so long, & so bitterly, it leaves me... bitter. Thankfully, the days are consecutively above freezing now, & alive things are starting to appear. This afternoon, to celebrate, my boyfriend drove me out into the country so i could go to a nursery where my family has taken me to my entire life. For the most part, all nurseries & plant farms produce a similarly pleasant nostalgia, which tends to result in unnecessary hours (& dollars) spent maintaining this green bliss. However enjoyable a trip to a nursery is, no other place can compare to the utter nirvana represented by this plant farm. Two-hundred acres of farm: over a dozen greenhouses, sheep (another blissful childhood memory,) burros, cats... everything alive & happy & beautiful. Bliss.
Sadly, i did not inherit my mother's green thumb. I cannot grow things. At all. I'll admit that it's largely due to a complete lack of sunlight in our antique neighborhood, but even house plants are hit & miss for me. I don't always kill everything, don't get the wrong impression, but it takes a pretty tough plant to survive my lifestyle. The ones that do, last forever. Knowing this, i buy lots of plants, every year. Probably two-thirds of them die, so i like to keep my odds high by getting a large number of them.
To date, the only successful gardening venture at this house has been my spring bulbs. This is the second year for them to bloom, which is enormously rewarding, since i don't have to do a damned thing, & they'll always reappear. One afternoon of hard work, years of enjoyment. It does make me a little mournful when i consider the reality that, once i've left this house, & it is occupied by other, more careless tenets, the tulips & daffodils & muscari that i love so dearly, will be forgotten & trampled beneath cigarette butts & PBR cans. Consistently, i remind myself what an important lesson in zen living this is: Sometimes, after planting a garden, you will abandon it.