SEEDS & WEEDS: The Funniest Things People Have Said About GARDENING

THE FUNNIEST THINGS PEOPLE HAVE SAID ABOUT GARDENING 63
rack at Walmart in June, or even mid-July. Some people collect shoes
because they can’t help themselves. Or boyfriends. Or cats. I collect
flowers. They are my bébés.
But in the dog days, my potted pretties become neeeedy little babies.
The ravenous rabbits, hellish heat, speckly spots, aphids and beetles,
crappy drainage, and leaky hoses are just the tip of my woeful iceberg.
July brings funky, fried-up leaves, stressed-out roots, and paltry
petals that are constantly whining for water or food or soap spray or neem
oil, seeming to barely notice the care I so tenderly provide, like ungrateful
teenagers. Even worse, those pestilent, post-pubescent plants begin a race
against what’s left of my personal time to create seeds, seeds, seeds —
absolutely hell-bent on procreation. And once that happens, well, I’ve
really lost the battle of beauty. A flower’s lust for baby making takes the
luster right out of it, and sure as anything, it’s lost its bloom.
The hundreds — and I do mean hundreds — of petunias I’m in charge
of each summer become controlling, colicky chlorophyll aliens in my own
Little Shop of Horrors, probing my every thought from across town and
demanding from me more and more of my blood, sweat, and occasionally
even tears as the summer marches on.
Have you ever seen a petunia that’s gone to seed? Not long after each
blossom has withered brown and fallen to the ground, a petal-free pod
poking out of a Kermit the Frog-like collar emerges, bearing a striking
resemblance to Little Shop’s Audrey II, the man-eating monster-weed