I’ve suspected it but simply didn’t want to admit the truth. The massive 3 feet around plant taking up a prominent space in my front garden is a wildflower. Albeit a pretty and prolific one as it makes this purplish blue bells on tall stalks. But immediately upon finishing to bloom, the entire plant – stalks and all – go brown and die. Not a green leaf in sight.

I am tired of the tease. Such a hopeful growing spring of green that ends in dry brittle crackling brown. I want things that last in my garden and decided to yank it.

As soon as my shovel starts to get under the roots, I begin to doubt. The internal conversation I have goes like this…

This is going to turn my garden into a living representation of Sunnydale, CA after Buffy was done fighting evil.

Yes it will. But it needs to come out. It looks horrible and the entire garden is being planned around a lie.

But what will go into its place?

I don’t know. Something.

What?!

I don’t know. Whenever something comes, it will go there.

Well, how can you make this massive change without a plan?!!!

I just know that this is the right thing to do. Shut up and dig.

From there it was fun getting my fingernails all brown and noting how shallow the roots actually were and then having to hack the very flat, very wide root ball in half in order to get it out of the ground.

But on top of all that, I had an unmistakable feeling of connection – that the physical action was the mirror of an internal weeding – that I’ll probably have a big hole in my heart for awhile – but that if I waited and listened and imagined and watered enough, something amazing would get planted there too.

How in the world did I manage to kill mint? Only thing I can imagine is that the soil was too acidic from the cedar bush that was the soil’s last occupant.

The oregano made the air smell absolutely delicious when I clipped all of the brown dead flowers off.

I’ll admit it… my watering can is annoying. Built more for aesthetics and less for actually getting things wet, holding a tad over a liter with the tiniest holes I’ve ever seen in the spout.

Don’t think I’ll put petunias in the garden itself again. Beautiful in containers, but in the bed itself, they make my front porch look like the entrance to a second-rate mall. I think they definitely for mass plantings only. Go big or invest in perennials. lol

Nasturtiums are super easy to grow from seed, the Thunbergia not so much.

Be careful when you weed. I almost pulled up what turned out to be a Shasta Daisy that I had forgotten about. I adored those four little white blooms while I had them.

And lastly, water water and don’t forget the water.

ps. sorry for the lack of white space in my post. wordpress decided to screw with my template

without my express written permission and we’ve yet to figure out what and/or how they did it.

Once upon a time a girl swung in a park.
She almost reached the trees.
Teasing those leaves with her touch,
She rebelled, embraced, dreamed.
And yet one day walked away.
Almost never to remember.
Until memory came flooding back
at the side of such a precious daughter
and dreamt the same dreams
under new leaves too familiar to be strangers.

I belong to a super awesome collection of women. We call ourselves Chicks on Lit and gather in a group on Goodreads where we discuss books, first and foremost, but after that just about everything under the sun. This week, they got me started thinking on what I want to do in this life. We started to boldly post our lists.

I don’t have an entire list yet, but definitely started one last weekend. The lady who owned the B&B we stayed in had a wall of hiking trail certificates, saying that she had walked the entirety of this trail or that. One of them was for the Bruce Trail here in Ontario, and I realized then and there that I would love to see Ontario from top to bottom.

The trail starts below Niagara Falls and goes almost straight north – and practically through our backyard! – ending after 885 klicks (that’s Canadian for kilometers) in Tobermory, a peninsula jutting out between Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. Here’s a map!

Probably I’ll be able to drag the family over a few trails here and there but to do the whole thing will probably require some girlfriends when we are all retired and rich. No matter, I’m looking forward to it already!

ps. More blogs of the Chicks are easily found by using the Bunko Blog Webring link in my sidebar. Tell them hello and that I sent ya!

pss. I had a friend in college who insisted on calling all us girls in the group by the nickname of Chick. I hated it for so long. He knew it too. Until one day, I realized that both he and the name held absolutely no deragotory inferences to my inferiority. I was more than allowed to be a girl *and* have brains. Darn straight!