Yard Work

My grandparents on both sides were quite the gardeners. Flowers, plants, fruits, vegetables; they grew it all. I, on the other hand, have been known to kill silk flowers, and my mother holds the record for fastest kill: a poinsetta plant left on the porch for fifteen minutes one Christmas eve. Apparently, this was one genetic trait that was not passed down. Prematurely gray hair, yes, green thumb, no.

So with spring in the air (actually manure from everyone else on the block putting down fresh mulch), I hired a service to do some yard work. They would supply the mulch, I would supply the flowers, and within a few short hours, we would have a beautiful yard right out of Better Homes and Gardens.

Eight thirty in the morning, a truck pulled up and dropped off thirty bags of mulch. By 8:45, three men were digging and weeding and scrubbing at the brick planters. I happily got in my car and went off to Home Depot to get my flowers, thinking of how easy this was going to be.

Not being able to tell a tulip from a petunia, I got a cart and looked around for someone who could give me some helpful advice. Unlike in the commercial, where customers are greeted by smiling workers who not only advise them, but actually help them build the additions onto their homes, I could only find one cashier who was hiding inside her glass booth and looked more like Grumpy or Sneezy than Happy.

So I set off into the jungle of plants and flowers on my own, hoping for the best. I sniffed, I touched, I read signs. I started loading up my cart with pretty flowers in colors that would match the house. Then, I stumbled across something I never expected to see...an employee. Quickly, I grabbed him before he could disappear back into the maze of carts and racks and begged for help. Would these plants survive both the cool spring and blistering hot summer?
How much water did they need and how often? More importantly, could they survive the family curse?

Ten minutes later, after I finished putting all those flowers back, I reloaded my cart with new flowers that didn't match the house as well, but had a better chance of survival. Ten minutes after that, I emptied them out of the cart onto a flatbed cart that would hold the amount of flowers I needed and would only take me one trip to the car. And ten minutes after that, I had a car that looked like a float in the Rose Parade, and clogged up my sinuses for the next two days.

Arriving home, I unloaded the car and discovered the men had moved on to the back yard. They had weeded the front within an inch of its life, yet left untouched some scraggly looking green things and one lone petunia from last year, as well as a totally dead shrub. I guess I wasn't clear about ripping out pretty much everything.

I brought the guy who seemed to be in charge up front and tried, despite the language barrier to explain to him (again) what I wanted done. He nodded very agreeably and quickly disposed of the offending matter while I separated the containers of flowers and arranged them in the flower beds. Hmmmm, I definitely needed more flowers. I had used up my entire haul and didn't have any left for the backyard.

Okay, back to the Home Deopot for more flowers. Load the cart, unload the cart. Load the car, unload the car. Hadn't I hired people so I wouldn't have to do any work?

Haul the flowers around the house to the back only to discover that I may have been a bit too clear about ripping things out because the one flower bed was missing the big, leafy plants that had been growing there for the past five years. Apparently they looked less healthy than the dead bush. Once more, the team leader nodded agreeably while I gestured, spoke slowly and used small words (I know that this does not help me understand another language any better when I am in a foreign country, but I was getting desperate. I even considered running inside and watching a few episodes of Dora the Explorer to see if she could help me).

In the end, I decided it was better for my blood pressure to give up and go back to the store for more flowers. Fifteen minutes later I returned to find that, thankfully, no more perfectly healthy plants had been ripped out. We were, however, missing a strip of grass that ran between one of the flower beds and the fence. That whole area was now one giant flower bed!!! I've seen less carnage in horror movies. This was way beyond Dora's abilities now.

Concerned for the remaining grass and our dogwood tree, I decided to keep a closer eye on the guy doing the weeding. A few minutes later, head guy wanted to show me how nice the planted flowers looked, so I followed him over to the flower bed I where I had spent a considerable amount of time painstakingly arranging the flowers in groups, according to color. Proudly, he pointed to where he had transfered the flowers into the bed, spreading them out in a widely random pattern, mixing and matching colors. He gave me the thumbs up sign and a broad smile, clearly pleased with his artistry.

Shockingly, he was surprised when I didn't hug him and shower him with praise.

Next year, I'm contacting a clairvoyant and seeing if I can channel either one of my grandparents for an afternoon.