mary, mary quite contrary...

I don't think it's just me, I think everyone has at least one of these: something you love but you're terrible at. Mine's gardening. Actually I couldn't even go so far as to say I love it. I guess what I really love are other people's gardens. I love flower gardens and vegetable gardens, although if it's too big a plot, I admit I don't like it as much -- too many weeds waiting there between the zucchini and tomatoes, I know it. But I love big, plant-filled backyards, with little "outdoor rooms," and "pretty-ish sort of wildernesses" that make you want to explore them. I love all the gardens in my magazines, even the xeriscaped yards. ...No, I don't believe I like my own garden at all.

Okay, really I love my little gardens once a year: at the very first turn of the soil in the spring. I love that delicious moist dirt smell as you break your back trying to soften it all up again. I love the first planting. I even kind of like the first weed-out of the season. And then it ends. Oh, sure, I keep weeding and adding annuals and occasionally trimming back the dead heads. ...For a while, anyway.

It's almost the end of September now. I quit pulling weeds a month ago out of principle, and I must say, if you just let them go, they'll really find a way to become the star of the planter. I have all the usual smaller weeds that only ever spread out, but not up; I've got Morning Glory attempting a hostile take-over of the Black-Eyed Susans; a distant relative of the dandelion is sprouting up nicely (and fluffily) between the faucet on the house and the evergreen-whatevers growing a few feet away; and some fleshy-looking, spreading thing my father-in-law once sampled as a snack and invited me to try as well (as it's an apparently integral part of someones dinner salad in Ecuador or something), is thriving everywhere else.

Meanwhile, over in the veggie patch, my tomatoes are barely going to have turned red by the time the first frost hits. I'm about ready to try some fried green tomatoes just so I can say I got to eat my very own tomatoes this year. The yellow squash produced one perfect, summery squash, and the rest shriveled on the vine long ago. Right next door, the zucchini are producing far more than any family should have to eat in one summer. So for all those reasons, as well as the fact that the morning glory have really outdone themselves on the tomato cages, I'm calling it done pretty soon here -- I'm thinking another, oh, day or so, and they're coming out. Fall is the most delicious time of year anyway, so I say, bring on the dead leaves. Come on, crispy mornings. Hello to the end of dragging my sprinkler around the yard every other day. No more dirt under the fingernails til Spring.

I love the fall, and the end of my growing season's just another fantastic reason to celebrate it. You know, I think I'd have made a lousy farmer. Lucky my livelihood doesn't depend upon my ability to garden. Oh well, even if it did, I seem to be really good at cultivating those salad-green weeds from Ecuador. Looks like I'd be okay after all.

Happy Fall.