Forgive Me ~ I'm a Guilty Gardener

I am a guilty gardener. Although I love flowers, I hate taking care of them. When I go on vacation, I let Mother Nature take over my small flower garden, but she's no better than I am. I come back to find yellow flowers where there should be pink. I get excited, then I see that they are dandelions. Dandy! I yank them and then I spy a pill bug, an earth worm, a creepy crawler...and I feel guilty for wrecking their habitat, so I water the weeds along with the flowers.

When students give me hanging baskets, I hang them as high as my hopes. They always thrive till day five and then shrink from lack of a drink. I give them a big gulp; they nearly drown, then rebound. It's a vicious cycle until I give them to my daughter for her birthday every late June.

This year I did not plant my Impatience along the edge of the patio, nor did I plant a border of marigolds to ward off the mosquitoes. At the end of May I weighed the pros and cons of planting a flower bed. I so enjoy sitting outside in the floral-scented evening air reading a book.

Then, I thought about all the weeding. West Nile disease. The darned no-seeums that nibble my ankles. The bees that love the flowers more than I do. My horrible death from anaphylactic shock if I were to get stung. I felt guilty not purchasing bedding plants. I missed the floral fragrance, so I alleviated my guilt by buying one of those air freshener plug ins. Now, I get a nose full of petunia every time the gadget goes off. I've read more books indoors in the airconditioning than I ever have outdoors swatting bugs and wiping sweat from my brow.

Actually, I haven't given up on flowers all together. Pass by my house and you'll see a decorative pot on my front porch. It contains teeny flowers in every shade of purple and pink with lush greenery. I have a spray of daisies surrounding a red, white and blue wooden heart shape in an Americana aluminum planter. There's also a little bird house with the same motif in that planter along with a small American flag that blows on breezy days.

Then there's the pretty pink flowers in the unique pink planter (remittance from an editor with a sicker sense of humor than mine). I made a sign and stuck it in those flowers: Yearning for Sunshine. I thought it appropriate for a pink, plastic bedpan planter.

My floral arrangements, in their unique planters, are pretty and just right for a guilty gardener. They are all fake!Take a look.