This is a tough time of year for me. For any gardener, I’m sure. But maybe especially for any impatient gardener, which is what I am. I want spring to last and last so that I can squeeze every last gush of adorable out of all the baby growth but I want my garden to already be a grownup. Right now. And so every day, after mentally stressing over plant placement, digging scads of holes and planting at work, I come home and do the same thing – only on a much smaller scale. And promptly after planting sweet peas at dusk, or finding just the right place for a new Tiger Eye sumac and last year’s nine bark, which was in the wrong place – and digging three holes that feel more like 10 work ones – I can’t help but fall asleep on the couch. I don’t go out to parties. I don’t sit at the computer. I don’t sweep the floor or bring in vases of daffodils or tulips. I rise only to eat, watch 1/3 of a movie or get ready for bed at an absurdly early hour.
And I do wrong things in my attempt to have an insta-garden. I plant aggressive things like butterbur, plume poppy, autumn olive (at least it’s a sterile form), and even mint. In the ground. Nobody plants mint in the ground! And I plant them in wrong places. 
The mint found the foundation crack that leads directly into the kitchen – perhaps it’s headed for a mojito. I can tell you, since it grew into the path, that it makes a brilliantly fragrant steppable… But then plume poppy should not be planted anywhere near a walkway let alone within 2 feet of one – it just shouldn’t! And I know it without having to make the mistake first. Even to move it now will cause havoc, chaos and exponential spread. But in pursuit of lush, there it is. And there it may remain because now I’m asleep on the couch.
Do you do wrong things on purpose too? Are you more patient than I? Are you more awake?
kristin green | trench manicure 
Do you do wrong things on purpose too? yes
Are you more patient than I? I think so, or more lazy.
Are you more awake? not really
Wayne, you’ll never get me to believe you’re lazier than me. More patient – that I’ll give you. -kris
I’m impatient, too. I’m looking at my sprouts and baby plants longing for the day when they’ll be thick and lush. Happy gardening!
Avis, the way spring is going here, maybe we won’t have to wait too long. Happy gardening to you too! – kris
Kris…another perfect post about being a real gardener! I am neither more patient or more awake…My sister tried to get me to take a slip of plume poppy…I have seen it over take her garden…was she nuts! I the south it would be like deliberately planting kudzu! Have a good week! Thanks f.or the smiles. gail
Gail, I’m even more worried about that plume poppy now. And yet, there it still sits. Mocking my lazy. -kris
This post speaks to the heart of the gardener. Time is in short supply and often the lack of it results in imperfection. I have beds which are still lying under a blanket of leaves. I did dig a hole for a new shrub but the shrub sits in the pot while the hole awaits and, I do have mint planted directly in a bed. I am thinking of rhubarb mojitos and napping on the couch.
Layanee, relaxing with a rhubarb mojito sounds like exactly the right thing to do while everything else goes undone. (But those undone things nag and nag, don’t they?) -kris
we had a very close call with frost last night… glad of my patience.
It’s June now, and in California that means the dry season has started. Not much to do except hand water a few things, and watch things unfold. Planting can happen again in September/October.
Reading blogs from all over the country really makes me appreciate the differences between the different climates.
Town Mouse, I’m looking forward to being finished with planting season, which at work pretty much ends at the beginning of July. Here at home I might still be sneaking a few more things in when it’s hot and awful… But soon I’ll have time to post again and catch up with my blog reading! Thanks for visiting! -kris