Mark and I have become crack addicts at the garden center(s). If he should say aloud, “I think I’m going to pick up a couple more tomato plants,” I jump in the car before he even asks if I’d like to tag along. Once there we make a pact to keep it reasonable and not get carried away.
Carried away is a relative term.
He fills the counter with vegetables. I fill it with flowers. We both mutter “holy crap” when the total is announced. Really? That much? We drive back home, often deep in our own thoughts about this spending on our gardens. A few days later an opening in the dirt appears here or there and one of us announces that a quick trip to the garden center is needed for “one or two things” and then we’re back staring at a counter full of plants muttering again.
This weekend we went on a garden tour where it became clear that our little foray into garden spending was but an amateur’s folly compared to the real players. At a conversation I had at the last garden with someone working the event, we talked about this spending of money we all tend to get carried away with to achieve a great garden. “Yeah, my partner and I say every year that we’re not going to go over $5000 but we always do.”
I got the vapors.
Five thousand?
There were enough flowers throughout the day to make me swoon, enough vegetables to make Mark sigh. So much creative juju all around to fill us up and make us all dreamy-eyed.
Behold the work of the pros and the ideas that have the brains of Farmer McGregor and I reeling with possibilities for next year…….after we pick clean the money tree in the backyard we planted.
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| The paint studio |
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| Boxwoods done in a Scottish plaid |
