Brown Thumb

I love roses. I enjoy working in the yard and I absolutely love flowers. My mother used to be fantastic with roses – spent much of her summer taking care of dozens of them in our back yard. She knew exactly how to water, feed, prune, even talk to them to get them to grow the most amazing flowers. I unfortunately inherited the love for the flower, but not the green thumb to actually nurture it. We decided to plant rose bushes in our back yard, but they truly are a sad sight. The best season they had was last summer when I WAS NOT HERE. How bad is that? I am here, they suffer. I leave, they thrive. Nice.

Today we put down more potting soil and mulch and I have properly pruned them and fed them and yelled at them – so they better grow, damnit. We have also planted some dark purple flowers in the front, which are doing surprisingly well – although I do have to water them every day and talk to them and pick the dead flowers off, and keep the dog from peeing on them when we are outside together…which is a challenge. Why are pretty plants so enticing to dogs? Why must they spread their acid-laden urine all over my plants? Do they not know how difficult it is for me to grow ANYTHING when all of the stars are aligned?

Speaking of dogs that are a pain in the ass – we also have a grass issue in our yard – due to the dogs. They like to run back and forth against the fence and bark at the neighbor and the trash man, and of course basketball boy. By doing this, they have created a nice little (HUGE) path of dirt upon which nothing will grown. They have managed to even scare away the weeds – which are usually afraid of nothing. So I decided to put up one of those orange plastic construction fences to keep them out of that area so that grass can grow and we can be rid of the dirt. Sounds good in theory, however our Great Dane mix is large and jumps like a gazelle, so it is not even a small challenge for him. He just thinks for a brief moment, and hops right over. Our Lab is not graceful, but he is large – so he just pushed right through the fence, tearing it down. Big Oaf. That was money not-well-spent. We most likely are going to end up putting sod down because we cannot keep the monsters out of the area. Wonder if that will grow? Doubtful.

Stupid yard. Stupid flowers. Stupid brown thumb.