Spring Flower Planting Rituals

Annuals. I’ve always thought planting them was a short-sighted thing to do, flowers that go for only a year then they’re gone. Dead, pffft! If you want to have them again you have to buy more, stick them in the ground again. What a racket!

My wife wanted to put some in. A club she belonged to was selling them. OK, here we go with the home beautification. Pretty it up, then dig them out next year and (probably) do it all again. Not only a racket, but with this connection a pretty foolproof moneymaking racket. She got a few flats. “Flat” is a word which means more flowers than you can have a use for. First thing, she said, was that we needed to get some potting soil. Buy dirt? Really, you must be kidding. She was not. We bought dirt. This dirt had special stuff mixed in it to help flowers grow. Since you and I both know what that is, I’ll leave it to you to think for yourself what it was I paid money for. So not only did I buy dirt, I bought that. 

So the next job is to take a bunch of flowers that are already growing in little pots, and plunk them into the ground? At least this part will be easy. Kid stuff, I thought to myself. With the first shovel into the ground, I heard a clunk. What’s that? Hmmm, a wire. A big round wire, a cable. Hey honey, go check to see if the TV still works. It didn’t. 

Dig out the old dirt, dump in the new dirt, put in a little water, put in the flower, fill in the dirt around it and do it again. That’s not hard. Not hard to do it one time. Stooping over now, do it again. My back is starting to ache, squat, do it again, my thighs are killing me, do it again, sit down in the dirt, do it again. 

How hard a job can it be? Yeah, sissy job. I’ll tell you some other time, Right now I can’t think of anything but getting into a hot tub and collapsing somewhere close by.