I have a green thumb. My plants flourish because of my attention to them. When I¿m in a planting mood, I spend all day outside, and, by the end of the day, I am covered head to toe with dirt.
Georgia soil is not user friendly. It is rocky, red clay mixed with some soil. Essential tools are a pickax, a strong shovel, and a hoe. I buy small plants, start them in pots, then transfer them to my yard.
Fifteen years ago, I purchased a 12 inch peace lily at Kmart. It is seven feet tall and the first thing you see when entering the two story foyer of our home. I have transferred it to larger and larger planters every year. My husband swears it is of alien origin and will attack us one night.
I tended to my flowering pink spireas for many years. They grew to a ten foot height. The hydrangeas that lined the railing of our backyard deck sported massive blue flowers that I treated with coffee grounds to change the flower hues. Huge yellow forsythias, three of them, peeked around the corner of our house. Each spring I reveled in the beauty of my plants.
Then, the yard workers showed up.
While I was out shopping, my husband employed three workers to spread 200+ bales of pine straw on the three islands in our front yard and around my many azaleas.
They were also instructed to prune plants. Instead they chopped off my spireas, my hydrangeas, and my forsythia. My hydrangeas died, my spireas grew back looking like gnarled trees near a witch¿s habitat, and my forsythia looked feeble.
When I returned home, I was livid. I accosted those workers in the best Spanish I could manage. One of them asked my husband if I was eres loca [born crazy] and said they would not return unless he planned to be there to supervise.
My anger increased every time I walked out on our property. Then I remembered the eight 15 foot junipers gracing the front of our house. Junipers cannot be pruned, so the workers braced them with tacky pieces of wood that they covered with pine straw. I kept waiting for the junipers to be replaced.
So I got to work. I went to Home Depot and purchased a nose mask and an electric tree lopper. I climbed up a ladder and starting from the top, I lopped off branch after branch until the only part remaining of those junipers were the chunky short parts near the soil. I threw all the branches in the driveway. My husband could not drive up the driveway because the ten foot high pile of branches prevented his access to our home.
Smart man that he is, he knocked on our neighbor¿s door and inquired about my demeanor. My neighbor said, ¿Your wife has been cutting down trees for six hours. I call it the Juniper Massacre. It might not be safe to go home just yet. Would you like a drink?¿
I purchased ten full grown azaleas to the tune of $70 apiece. My husband hired the illegals to plant those azaleas the same day.
That¿s what I call efficiency.
And, yes, I am trying to work on my patience.
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