Bad Luck in the Garden

    Gardening.  Whenever I have fully engaged in it I have been very happy.  Getting my hands into the dirt and working with the plants always feels fulfilling and in a way cleansing.

    In the past my gardens have not always done that well.  If I were to give into the opinions of less than well-meaning individuals I might say that I have a brown thumb.  But thinking about it and all the circumstances in retrospect I would have to argue with that.  I have rather had bad luck.  A combination of bad luck and being a beginner.

    I think anyone who knows anything about gardening, or any skill or hobby really, could understand how being a beginner could lead to some failures.  So let's talk about bad luck.  In the garden.  I have four stories for you today.

    I have never really had the best health.  And it only got worse as I got injuries and illnesses that left me with lasting effects.  Like limited manual dexterity and an ever weakening stomach.  It can be hard to take care of your plants when you can’t get out of bed or when you are not coherent.

Gardening and Bad Roommates 

    I had a significant other who was among other things abusive.  He couldn’t be bothered to help tend things.  He even told me when I was thinking of getting a fish that if there was any reason I couldn’t feed the fish he wouldn’t.  He was shit.

    Well if any of you remember when the 2009 - 2010 swine flu was going around.  I got sick.  Real sick.  I have no idea if I had that flu, but I was in bed for 4 days.  I remember because I had to call one of my instructors to ask if I could make up a lab day that I had missed.  He was supposed to be a really strict instructor and he was fine with this.

    Well at that same time I was growing a watermelon plant in the yard and it was doing well.  Until I got sick.  No one in the house, including the shit significant other, could be bothered to water the plant.  My watermelon never recovered.  I mean everyone gets to eat the watermelon if it grows.  Why wouldn’t you just pour some water on the plant?

    In that same household there was another plant incident.  Early in my adulthood I had come across a variety of rose bush that I absolutely loved.  An Iceberg.  Small delicate white roses with a soft floral scent.  They were lovely and I wanted one of my own.  Every year I looked for one and finally after five years I found one.  I brought it home and planted it in the bed with the other roses.  And then one of my housemates was doing yard work and killed it with the weed wacker.  I was distraught.  I had put it in the rose bed.  How was it mistaken for a weed?

    Let's move on from plant disasters involving humans to ones involving cats.

Gardening and Cats

    Cats.  They’re fluffy. They're soft. They’re adorable.  They’re not the best gardeners.

    I was living in an apartment with a few other housemates and  one of them had a cat that wasn’t supposed to be in the apartment.  The cat stayed in their room.  I had managed to germinate the seeds of a yellow bell pepper and gotten them going quite nicely in a pot on the patio.

    A freeze came and I brought them into the apartment so they wouldn’t take damage from the cold.  My housemate's cat got out and decided the pot looked a lot like a litter box.  My bell peppers did not survive.  The cat had dug them up and well thought it was a litter box.  So I am sure you can imagine the damage.

    There is another cat story.  This one at the home with the roses and the watermelon.  There was an unoccupied bedroom that we used for storage at that time.  The owner of the home kept his fishing line and other things in there that he didn’t want his cat to get into.  Including the fishing line he used for shark fishing.  Which his cat had on more than one occasion chewed through.  I am not well versed in fishing, but it sure seems like an impressive feat to me.

    I was successfully growing an avocado.  It had its own pot and was just over two feet tall.  It had beautiful waxy leaves at the top.  I was so proud of it.  Well we had a freeze come so I brought it inside.  And I put it in the storage bedroom so the cat couldn't get to it.  And yet somehow the cat got into that room and chewed my plant in half.  He decapitated my lovely little avocado tree.  I tried to get the tree to survive, but without leaves it was an uphill battle that was lost.

    So there you have it.  Four short tales of bad luck with plants.  Do you have any sad tales from your gardening adventures?