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 