My Crappy Garden

"When you have a Garden, you have a Future and when you have a Future, you are Alive," Frances Hodgson Burnett.


Now you know I am a quote person.  I have been collecting them for years, stashing them in drawers and books.  Creating walls to display my favorites.  When I read the quote above I felt inspired and hopeful...it is finally time to grow a garden I told myself.


Sadly, I have been telling myself that same thing over and over.  I enthusiastically plant flowers every year and even some vegetable plants.  But by July almost everything is dead or eaten by wild animals.  And living across the street from a busy park, we have some very aggressive wild animals. 


I always thought gardening was like cooking, if you can read a recipe you can cook, bake, whatever.  

But I now believe, it is a gift.  

One that I do not possess.  

This year's vegetable garden, looking like it has for the last five years.

My mother is completely crazy, but she has the gift.  She forgets to take care of herself, but yet amazingly she has the most beautiful flowers.  The haze from her constant smoking makes me feel like I should put an oxygen mask on when I visit.  But yet, she can make plants grow inside!  That is another topic, well, both are--the crazy mother and indoor plants--but I thought they were worth mentioning.


Watching my mother continually have beautiful flowers year after year since I was little, I just assumed I would inherit that gardening gift.  But no, I got her depression and anxiety.  


So, here I am depressed with a crappy garden.  But wait, I know another quote (one of my favorites on my bathroom wall of words) that inspires me.


"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it." 
-Shug Avery, in "The Color Purple" by Alice Walker

Notice? Appreciate? Be aware of the true beauty of the world?  
I can do THAT!

Even if it is a farmer's market and not a field.