Only Myself to Blame

The Fall gardening season has officially begun here in Northeast Georgia. I know because the UGA Horticulture Club had a plant sale this weekend. Normally I'm not much of a shopper, but a good plant sale really gets me going.

The hardest part is figuring out and limiting myself to only what I need. It's not about the money. I'm out of room. No matter how pretty or fragrant or enticing, nothing comes home unless I know exactly where it will fit in the garden.

Lowe's was the first stop on my garden shopping expedition. Even before Lowe's opened a store on our side of town it was worth the trip. Knowing what they have keeps me from paying two or three times as much for the same thing elsewhere.

My next stop was the Hort Club sale. They had a lot of nice trees and shrubs, but not much in the way of annuals. I left empty handed.

The big family-owned nursery on the other side of town was my next stop. Last year they had pansies, violas, snapdragons and pinks in every imaginable color. Most years nearly all my Fall selections come from them. This year they didn't have squat.

Because it's in the 'hood, I checked Walmart. They had healthy-looking flats of violas with purple and white faces that must have come right off the truck. The odds of finding them again were slim to none so I bought three flats.

I returned to Lowe's for three flats of solid purple pansies, two flats of powder blue pansies, and two flats of dark pink snapdragons. Because they looked nice, we're expecting a mild winter, and I love the idea of a winter vegetable garden I also picked up 9-packs of broccoli, purple cabbage and two kinds of lettuce.

What was I thinking? Before planting anything I had to pull weeds and move about a dozen burnt up hostas out of the way. The vegetables went in first. By the time I quit several hours later, only three flats had been planted.

This morning I started working through the remaining eight flats. The planting area was ready so for a while, the work went a little faster. Then my body started talking about the difference between sitting on the sofa all summer and busting ass for two days like a migrant worker. I pushed through until every last pansy, viola and snapdragon were planted.

Just to prove it takes more than a few hundred pansies to bring me down, I decided to mow the yard. I got about a third of it mowed before I hit a wall. I'm not 30 any more. Those days are long gone. Maybe one day I'll manage to remember that BEFORE dragging all those plants home.

Now I'm just sore from head to toe and...

The Crotchety Old Man