It’s been daylight savings time now for 17 hours and already I feel the sun baked vigor of summer creeping into my bones. I planted a garden last week, quickly wiping the backyard of the air of death stagnating in the corners, left over from that cat corpse I found about a month ago. It was strange and wonderful to me how quickly my backyard was transformed. A couple of hours hard manual labor, a few tomato plants, and my backyard is no longer the city of weeds. It’s a real backyard, where you want to have a party and barbecue, spend the afternoon sunning yourself, or spend another afternoon digging in the dirt.
I have garden plans. I’m putting a flower garden in the back corner of the yard, and I’m filling it with all sorts of amazing and beautiful plants. Don’t ask me what those plants are yet, but it’s getting done and it will be spectacular. I have decided. My main problem right now is that it’s a shady spot that gets literally NO sun during the day, and I don’t like many shade plants. There aren’t many shade plants to like, for that matter.
I thought I had the black thumb of death, as far as plants are concerned. Every living chlorophyll creature I’ve taken care of to date has died a crisp death of brownness in a rock-hard (yet attractive) pot. I think I’m the only human being on earth who has ever killed a cactus. His prickliness died a soggy death of over watering- overcompensation, perhaps, for my previous attempts at keeping things alive. It may be a sign of my increased maturity that I can be responsible enough to water plants nearly every day, because I’ve had a beautiful pot of pansies since Valentine’s Day, and they are growing and thriving like no other plants I’ve ever owned. Lovely. Who knew I had it in me?
It’s nice to know this side of me is still there. I used to love helping my mother out in the garden when my sister and I were youthful girls still living as a family with a parent or two, as the case may be. Then I was only ephemerally responsible. I could plant and dig to my heart’s desire and not have to keep anything alive. That was someone else’s job. I love it still, and my biggest disappointment is going out into the yard each day and seeing no visible changes since the day before. When I really sit and think, things have grown a lot over time, it’s just hard to notice when you’re out there every day.
If you need me I’ll be out in the sun, sweaty and mud flecked with a trowel in my hand. Hopefully the plants will thrive for a little longer, and my black thumb of death will turn at least a vague shade of green. We’ll see!
Casey E. Hamilton 