Running with Scissors

Sara Peterson-Davis has worked as a newspaper researcher and reporter, as well as a communications director and consultant. She and her husband, Monty Davis, can be found in Liberty, Mo., keeping their two children from running with scissors. Contact Sara

Hope Springs Eternal

by Sara Peterson-Davis

Every spring, I dream of planting the perfect flower garden

A garden so artfully arranged that people will pause in front of my house to simply drink in its perfectly arranged botanical beauty. Beds packed with petunias and marigolds, snapdragons and pansies so healthy and hearty that the local extension agent will drop by to find out what my secret to gardening is. I imagine myself simply sighing and replying, “I guess I’m just blessed with a green thumb.”

Truth is my thumb is poison to just about anything with leaves and a root system. My attempts at creating my dream garden have been less like gardening and more like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. No matter how hard I try to make all those little blooms comfortable, it’s all going to end in disaster.

But spring is a time of hope and that’s what keeps me rushing back to the garden center year after year.

When I get there I walk along the rows of seedlings and start shopping indiscriminately. I pick up shady and sunny varieties. I grab the delicate and the sturdy. I make no never mind whether they are annuals or perennials. I just can’t resist a one of them.

If I listened close, I might hear the little screams issuing from my cart as my posies begged for mercy. I suspect that one look at me and flowers instinctively know that it’s the end of the line.

When I get them home I put them carefully in the garage and get ready to create my dream garden. That’s about the time my dream starts to go bad.

One year I got to this point and the phone rang, postponing my planting. When I returned, my little flowers had suffered a mauling by the cat. If there’s anything deadlier to bedding plants than my poison thumbs, it’s cat spit.

I tried to nurse them back to health, but even the best soil and fertilizer couldn’t save their stunted little lives.

Another year, I got everything in the ground and a couple of days later a thunderstorm rolled in. A thunderstorm with rains so heavy that by the time it was over, my neighbors were floating down the street in a canoe. No kidding.

Needless to say, my flowers looked like Martha Stewart had artfully stomped them into the mud with her favorite designer gardening clogs.

Honestly, though, I can’t always blame saliva, typhoons or my thumbs on my gardening disasters. If the truth were known, most years I simply suffer from gardening attention deficit.

Everything goes in the ground just fine and my garden grows just fine. That is until the kids get out of school and the weather gets warm. Who can remember to water and weed when there are ballgames to see, picnics to pack and about a thousand other things to do more fun than watering flowers.

By mid-July my once happy little blooms have passed their prime and it’s the survival of the fittest. The heartiest plants have stems that are all thick and woody and their blooms are small and pale. While I try to resuscitate them with a good soaking for a couple of evenings, it’s too little too late.

By August, it looks like I’m drying herbs in my front yard. But I wouldn’t know because I’ve taken the kids to the pool to escape the heat.

By September, my flowerbeds look like I’ve gotten an early start on a Halloween display.

But now, it’s April again. And I’m hopeful that this year things will be different.

Instead of arranging deck chairs, I’m dreaming of arranging vases of flowers.

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