Six Billion Bulbs and a Eunuch

I have to tell you, it was nearly impossible to get myself back in here to write this post. Right now it is 67 degrees outside, sunny and all six billion tulips are blooming in my yard. Six billion may be a slight exaggeration but only slight. At least that’s how it felt from the ground up a few months ago with my spoon in hand as I tried to find places to put these little darlings. A dear friend assured me that the reason some of them were smaller and not up to my exacting standards or as the Saint likes to say my “Demands,” is due to their rather short time in the ground. As you may recall it was hardly my fault. Summer never really ended, it more likely resembled the big hook yanked it ungraciously off the stage so winter could do her little song and dance. And her special talent was freezing temperatures and icing my pond up a foot and half deep. Oddly, the talent portion of her routine was cut short and we oozed into what could normally be called a long wet Northwest spring. Of course it wasn’t spring, it was only January and everyone was confused.

Now that would have been the perfect time for me to plant those plump little bulbs other than the fact that Swine Flu was porking it’s way through my system and just before the little oinker left the pen the Titanic event happened in our bedroom thus inviting the porker to stay an extra couple of weeks. It was like some slovenly house guest you can’t get off your couch who eats all your best snacks and wants to know when you’re going shopping again. Dude, get a job or go home!

That left February and that’s when I got out there with my little spoon and a wheel barrel full of discount bulbs and got busy. In the end I gave up on the spoon and just used my finger to open up a hole. In case you’re wondering why I was using a spoon, let’s not get into the finger issue, it was because the winter was so nonexistent that nothing died back and there was simply no room at the Inn. What’s that? Sounds like I over planted? Heck yeah, I over planted! I was so paranoid that every single thing I planted would die a horrible wilty brown death that I figured my best shot at having at least one flower show up would be to plant six billion of them. There’s that number again. I’m not sure if there’s an underlying message there or not but I do enjoy the way I hear Austen Power’s Dr. Evil say it in my head. Now there might be a message in that but, it’s probably best if we leave sorting that out to the professionals.
Before the shortest month of the year and the warmest non winter was over we also dug up and re-bedded our gunnera plant. A huge dinosaur plant weighing, you guessed it, six billion pounds. This may not be an exaggeration. I was watching a home and garden show the other day and saw a group of seven men moving a root ball the same size as our gunnera. And these strong backed young men were whining about needing big equipment or more men. HA! The Saint and I did it with a strap and two crotchety old people. That would be us, the crotchety old people. Crotchety, but wily. And here’s my favorite part of the end of that month; the rose bushes were putting up new growth. I never got the chance to cut them back because they never gave up the ghost. They had roses blooming right up into the freeze and then just shrugged it off and came back for more. I figured I should at least trim them down and in a passing fit of pruning and, I do mean passing, I was on my way to the garage at the time, I grabbed the clippers and whacked a few stalks. Since I was on the way to the garage, read—to the car wearing a skirt and heels, I did not happen to be wearing my skanky gardening gloves, so I just left the stalks on the ground…"to be picked up later." We all know what happened next. The thing I didn’t count on however was that a month and a half later, after my blinding by Dr. Mengele, that I would find those clippings laying on the ground—GROWING. Just laying there, abandoned on the pathway, uncovered, out in the open, like they never even realized they were no longer attached to the bush. This place is so weird. So, I put them in some water and I’m hoping to have enough roots to plant them this summer. Maybe they’ll have roses for December. Of course at this rate they might have them next week. Hooray for horse poo!

And so now here I am glued to my office chair, literally, because it was the only way I would stay in here long enough to blog, the tulips are blooming the sun is shining and the air is filled with bird song and spring perfume. The garden centers are plying their wares again like the seedy pimps that they are and I am feeling like a eunuch at a porno convention. I am clearly going to have to, uh hmm…grow a pair and start yanking if I ever plan to take a walk on the wild side. Of course monogamy isn’t so bad. Not when you have something so tender, pretty, challenging and rewarding, always happy to greet you in the morning and smiling at you like you’re the best thing that ever happened on Earth. Gardening and marriage, full of bugs, disappointments, challenges and incomprehensible mood swings and one of the most rewarding relationships you can ever imagine. Springtime reminds me of why I fell in love in the first place…I don’t even mind picking the mess.