In search of inspiration
May 22, 2009 | Just me
For years I tried to have a flower garden. I did everything I was taught to do by my green-thumb mama. I dug, I watered, I mulched, I made lots of trips to Lowes.
Every year my flowers failed.
And I knew why.
It was the 30 stray kittens and cats that had made our barn and my garden their bed over the years. It was our dog, Bandit, that dug holes the size of Kansas. It was the roots of mature trees snaking up, branching out with a thousand tough tendrils that made my soil look like a net instead of dirt.
Give it up, mom, one of my kids said. Gardening just isn’t your thing.
And after time I believed that, too.
Until now. We moved a year an a half ago. I planted flowers. The eternal optimist, I was prepared to be happy with a tough perennial that might somehow survive my black thumb.
But the incredible happened! My vincas bloomed white and full. My hibiscus threw out rich peach colored flowers every day. My butterfly bush actually bloomed. Neighbors even dropped by to comment on how pretty my garden was.
Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe even the blackest of thumbs have a good year every once in a while. Kind of a like a kiss from God.
But it’s season number two and my flowers have taken off again. My butterfly bush from last year is twice the size it was. My deep red hibuscus is blooming. All my perenials came back, and a few annuals that weren’t supposed to somehow survived an ice storm and snow to peek through the mulch and wave hello.
My daughter came by the other day while I was in Estes Park. She was astounded.
All of my children have conceded — they say I had to have been right all along. The black thumb wasn’t my fault, after all. Bandit and the 30 cats and the trees — they were killing my creativity.
Every day I step out on the front porch and I marvel.
I’m surrounded by a few of God’s prettiest creations.
And that’s inspiring.
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