A Mommy Blog About Raising Men, Not Boys.
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Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Desert Rose

I guess it was the total disrepair at the Fernbank Gardens that made me decide I should abdicate my title as hillbilly neighbor of the garden world. I have to confess, I HATE GARDENING. I don't find it fulfilling. I don't find it rewarding. I don't get a great sense of peace by creating a lovely garden. I have no great need to work with my hands in the earth.

I just want it to magically look nice all on it's own.

Funny how that doesn't actually work out at all.

When I moved in, the woman who owned the house before me cut the roses by the front steps down into near oblivion. I am guessing she took them with her. I have no green thumb and all I know about roses is what my grandmother taught me - drop coffee grounds and banana peels at their feet and leave them alone. I've done this. I learned from Kirk at work that when I get black spot to pour a beer at their feet and the earth around them - this works, I do this. But there is probably a weeding and pruning part of this that I've been uninvolved in.

Proof.
So yeah, there's a rose plant in this mess. My children came outside for popsicles and I set to work taking out anything that wasn't roses. This was tricky and I've realized that there is something very big with a very thick base growing up that I'm going to have to use some Roundup or something to kill properly as it's growing from under the porch.
I pretty much had everything not roses cleared by this time as you can see. And WOW that looks like crap. I didn't document my next step but I pulled out all the rose branches that were dead, much to my surprise that was most of them, they were brittle and just came away instantly. Who knew? I cut everything down, but now I'm thinking maybe I should cut it down more, I don't even know.

You can see that big ass thick whatever TREE thing growing out from under my porch too. I WILL find the chemical to kill you with. I can't cut it, it'll just keep growing.

So now I'm wondering, should I plant a second rose plant next to this? This looks like hell. This is a small space of yuck. Two rose plants? A trellis? They aren't really climbing roses. Or are they and I don't understand roses? UGH I don't know.  All I know if that I gave them some banana peels and some coffee grounds and it rained like hell so I hope they show me some life.

In my work, I had to get down on the ground and got an unfortunate look under my porch.
I found a dead millipede (centipede?) and a gift left behind by our snake neighbor. I haven't seen her in weeks but the fact that she left her skin is an unfortunate reminder that she's now bigger as she was big as hell when I last saw her. I guess now I know where all the bunnies went. Well, I guess the coyotes might have eaten them. Hard to say.

Circle of life.

Now, I have to sort out this gardening shit. Ugh. I wish I was domestic sometimes.

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