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.

cooler than you think

There's something in me that wants to think I'm still cool -- If I ever was, that is. I'm always shocked when someone acts as if I'm older and less cool than I feel. Like the time my friend's 16-year-old came over to interview me for her financial literacy class (I failed, by the way), and asked me how old I am. "34," I said. "34?! Why you're so young!" she said. "You've still got your whole life ahead of you!", as if I'm considering throwing what's left of my miserable life away because I'm so terribly old already. And she said it in the same way that people sometimes talk to old people, like they're 4 years old and incapable of understanding adult conversation. Oh, I love her to death and she was really kidding (...I hope), but I can't help but wonder if she secretly thinks 34 is as good as 93 and I'm really teetering into the grave.

It's all relative, I guess.

Just like coolness.

I drove over to my favorite little antiques shop a few nights ago, hoping it would still be open. It wasn't. Dang 6:30. I ended up driving home behind a particularly obnoxious vehicle. To call it pimped would have been an understatement. It was shiny blue and very sparkly with dark tinted windows. It had several exhausts -- okay, probably just 2, but when he stepped on the gas, it sounded like 20. And I doubt it was more than 3 inches off the ground. It was a real beauty...Well, to someone, anyway. And on top of it, the entire neighborhood was shaking in beat with his woofers and subwoofers and tweeters and whatever else they have to make your music everyone's music.

I'm looking at this car and I'm thinking what I always think when I drive by these kinds of cars: This guy thinks he SO cool. Oh, look at me in my cool pimped ride! I'm so cool with my super loud music with the thump thump and the bass! Move out of the way, uncool people. (Isn't that what cool people say? I'm sure it is.)

Happily, I'm still only 34, so I didn't feel the need to yell at him to turn that racket down, there's people trying to drive here, and then add under my breath, Dang kids these days, think they own the world! That'll probably come when I'm about 35, but I'll check with my neighbor's daughter, she'll know for sure.

But I was reminded of a day a few years ago when I had the suburban filled up with our kids in car seats. It was one of those first yummy spring days of the year, when you have to roll down the windows and turn the radio up and breathe in the absence of winter. We were on our way to the library (which was usually a bad idea when I had two 1-year-olds, a 3-year-old, a 5-year-old, and a 6-year-old, but that's another story) and stopped at a red light. We had been there only a few seconds when we heard, rather than saw the car coming up behind us on our left. Then, of course, we felt him, and next moment, there he was in all his lowered, shiny red, tinted windows, thumpin' bass glory. We all looked over at him, and' although I didn't say anything, I thought it. Oh, look at you in your cool lowered car with your cool super loud music and your stupid tinted windows. You are so cool, Stud.

And then I turned my attention back to my stereo, which was also playing rather loudly, since of course, the windows were down and we had to be able to hear over the wind. It was then that I realized cool is relative. Because there I was, in my car seat-stuffed suburban, sunglasses on, bottles of formula in my bag, and the music blasting Goofy, singing "I'm Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee."

Now that's cool... At least to my kids. So I guess Mr Fancy Ride is cool to someone, and so am I. I'm sure we didn't make each other's cool lists, but at least I made it onto someone's. It probably won't last though. From what I hear of teenagers, I have a very short cool life, and I think it's already on the way out. Oh well, it was cool while it lasted.