Spring

It's spring! Spring...heck, it's halfway to summer already.

I noticed this morning that the roses on one of our rose bushes in front of the house is blooming. I love that rose bush--they are nice deep salmon colored roses.

Across the driveway my aunt Marge's irises have come up for another year. She had a lot of them and when she died, several of us took bulbs. I smile every year when I see them popping up because I remember Marge every year.

When I talk about roses blooming in my front yard, and irises popping up, it sounds like I'm a gardener.

I lie.

I look outside at the jungle that is our back yard, the wannabe grass that we gave up on years ago--oh, it gets green, but it's hard to know how much is grass and how much is weed and you wouldn't want to lie out on it; it would scratch your back through your clothes, it's so coarse.

But it's great for the dogs chasing each other around, and really--isn't that what we want? We aren't the kind of people to invite others over to relax by the non-existent pool or have a BBQ. We're the kind of people who fill the house with dogs and then watch them race around chasing each other outside. The non-grass is perfect for that.

There was a time when we moved here that I had great hopes of turning the dirt yard into a wonderful back yard for the kids. Walt took a landscaping class and we planted fruit trees that bloomed for a few years and gave us lots of fruit, but they eventually died--all except the apple tree which produces hundreds of tiny apples each year. They fall off the branches and the dogs chase them around as oddly flavored balls.

I tried doing the earth mother thing for a couple of years when the kids were younger and we planted things. I gave up on tomatoes because I was so grossed out by the tomato horn worms that fourished on the tomato vines. The zucchini grew to watermelon size and we learned I was the only person in the house who actually liked zucchini, and there are only so many zucchini breads that you can make.

We did have corn on the cob one year, a few tiny ears. They were delicious, but I don't think we tried the second year. I know people who are always harvesting wonderful things from their gardens, but I am not one of them.

My mother grew up on a ranch. She has soil in her veins. Sick plants revive under her care. She can grow anything, can bring almost anything back to life again.

I grew up with a cement back yard with clothes lines strung across it. We had a minuscule plot of land in a cement box, which you can barely make out on the right behind that adorable little girl in the chair.

When my sister was born, it was filled with weeds, but as we got older, my mother tried to teach us about planting a garden, but it never took. I remember pulling carrots out of the earth--but I never liked carrots as a kid, so there was little thrill there. I think we also may have planted beets. I hate beets, so obviously the reward of growing my own did not match the work that went into it.

I did house plants for a few years and they actually didn't die. But like most hobbies I start, it ran its course. It's not easy to grow houseplants in Davis because you can't just turn on the tap water and water them; you have to get it from some source that isn't softened. I still remember the moment when I was standing in the living room, looking at all the plants around me and I announced to them that I was tired of taking care of them, and they could all just die.

So they did.

Our yard has grapes that God takes care of, bushes that have grown so tall and thick that they are beyond trimming and will have to be chopped down. You have to be careful walking across the ground because it is so full of depressions, especially where the "graveyard" is. And there is still a huge hole that the kids dug when they filmed "Star Warts" when they were in junior high.

But...it works for us. It works for the dogs. But I'm never going to have a beautifully manicured lawn, a rainbow of flowers, butterflies flitting from plant to plant and birds visiting a birdfeeder where I can watch them.

Sometimes you make trade-offs. I like watching the puppies cavorting in grass that is taller than their heads and hiding behind the grapes leaves.