A Hater in Love with Gardens

I admit it...I'm a hater when it comes to yard work.  I have, to the best of my memory and knowledge, always hated plants, dirt, digging and weeding.  Shockingly, I am also no fan of flowers.  I prefer never to be sent them, as just looking at a lovely bundle of flowers provokes anxiety:  I look at them truly as ticking time bombs...how long will it take me to kill them this time?  You see, I have never managed to keep a plant alive for more than, oh, a week.  No matter what I do, it seems to be the wrong thing.  And that's just houseplants.  I have zero desire to spend my precious free time up to my ankles in dirt, coming across worms and heaven knows what else, in order to plant new flowers or spruce up the yard.  One of the main selling points for buying our condo, in fact, was the advantage that we don't have to do any yard work at all.  No, blissfully, a lawn company comes and takes care of all that for us.  They mow our lawns, remove our snow, and plant our flowers. (quite satisfactorily, I might add.) While I think flowers are pretty, I can't for the life of me imagine spending hours outside under the hot sun watering, weeding and preening.  I am a hater when it comes to gardening.

Enter this past week.  Carl and I visited Buffalo for a few days, where the majority of my relatives live and where I myself held an address for over a year during the early part of my college career.  We stayed with my aunt, uncle and cousin, who are simply the most amazing family you will ever encounter in your life.  I can't begin to tell you how lucky...how miraculously lucky...I am to be related to these people.  At any rate, yesterday morning, Carl and I were poking around their yard after doing the usual trip-errands like getting gas and visiting an ATM.  I went into their backyard, where I remembered my uncle used to grow sunflowers.  As a child, I vividly remember riding the swings on the swingset with my cousin as high as they could go, our feet nearly touching the enormously high sunflowers.  Well, it's been quite awhile since I was a kid, and I was pleased and delighted to note that the garden now bears all kinds of fruit and vegetables!! I was immediately enamored and took bajillions of photos.  

Imagine walking through a gate on an August morning and stepping into such a lovely garden.  Tomatoes to your left: cherry and beefsteak weighing down the vines.  Just below them, lovely and waxy banana peppers.  To the far corner of the garden, a huge raspberry bush blooms.  And directly along the back wall are grapevines.  Yes, grapevines!! My family has grapes growing in their own backyard, how awesome is that?? I took a photo of a bunch where one or two of the grapes even started to turn purple.

I imagined the possibilities of such a garden: imagine having an entire raspberry bush at your disposal! My aunt told me that, while this year most of the raspberries seemed to dry out, on most summers they have an overabundance to pick from.  And the grapevines were a suggestion of my cousin, who is now an adult and lives on the east coast, but as a young child brought up the idea of growing them.  Now, after growing for the past 20-some years, they serve almost as a privacy fence along the backside of my aunt and uncle's house.  Lovely.  

So, I am now in quite the quandary.  I hate gardening to the point of near wincing when I talk about it, but I want a garden like this!! However, I fully admit that I know it would wither and die under the supervision of someone like me.  Let's be honest...I'm also less than enthusiastic about starting such an undertaking on my own.  I know my good friend Akane has her own garden, and now that I know my aunt and uncle have a thriving one, I feel I can go to several people with what will undoubtedly be many insane and appalling beginner's questions.  But I can't do it alone.  So, dear friends...who wants to start a garden with me next year??? I say we go half-sies on everything...labor, start-up costs, seedlings, etc.  Then we can both reap the benefits, and I have less of a chance of destroying a new crop of plants.  We have almost a year to think about it.... any takers?? Any? Hello?

For now, as you mull over my once-in-a-lifetime offer, enjoy the photos of the loveliest garden ever.