History of a "Lime" Green Thumb

Circa 1979:The mothers of my two best friends and I come up with an idea to give us kids a bit o responsibility for the summer...a vegetable garden! We'd take our harvest to the Farmers Market for moolah. Dollars and cents fill us with hope. Certainly this will be the start of something big! But after planting the seeds, the newness quickly wears off. Mom does the weeding and harvesting. But she still lets us keep the $2.68 we earn from our Farmer's Market sales.

Circa 1987:My college roommate finds my solitary plant in the trash and gives me a bit of a lecture. Jean revives the plant before it is destined to the dumping ground. I feel like I just killed a cat. I'll never again throw away anything green, unless it's moldy bread.

Circa 1994: Just married, living in town and I (in my early attempt to prove my domestic worthiness) decide our rental house desperately needs a dose of floral accents. After all, we live next to retired green thumbs with inspiring flower beds, which make our house look pitifully barren. I throw a few pretty flowers in the ground and voila! They flourish, creating a nice, homey appearance for our now quaint home.

Circa 1995: Move to the family farm. Can't wait to get busy on the vast amount of yard to flaunt my obvious knack for gardening. But something goes amiss. My only successes are the flowers already planted by my mother-in-law. Everything else seems to flounder. What in the heck happened to my green thumb?

I come to find out that my early horticultural successes were entirely due to our green thumb neighbors. They'd sneak over while I was at work to cultivate, replant or fertilize, and consequently, creating my delusional green thumb.

But if anything, the setbacks make me more determined. After all, who doesn't want to live in an aesthetically-pleasing environment. So, after years of experimentation and talking to other real gardeners, I consider myself, well, a novice really. But I still love it! No doubt it takes patience, of which I lack. But it is so rewarding when a design finally comes together.

Yesterday, we toured the Lauritzen Gardens (where the photo was taken above). Talk about inspiration! But on a much smaller scale, I can have the same enjoyment at my very home...See my lilies below? It's taken me four years, but now I sneak out several times a day to peek at them. (Obviously, I'm on vaca.) As my mother always says, gardening and flowers are wonderful therapy. I hope you enjoy as well.