From Mona’s desk An addiction of spring
It’s been said the first step into working on an addiction is admitting you have a problem. With the utmost respect to those who work on serious addictions with alcohol, chemicals and other things,
I take a light-hearted look at an addiction I fall prey to this time of year.
MHFFTY (Must-have-flowers-for-the-yard-itis). The more serious condition is MHLFFTY (Must-have-lotsof-flowers-for-the-yard-itis). I have it.
It begins in winter when the seed and bulb catalogs start appearing. I mark seeds and plants I want and then, when God is merciful, my notes are lost among household chores. That’s OK, because when the time comes, I know I’d rather walk into a local green house, enjoy the scent of petunias and dozens of other flowers mixed in the air and take time to find the right colors for my yard.
This year, I made it to three greenhouses in three days. I told myself after the first one that I had enough and I was done buying for the year. The second day I found myself at another and, after a sizable purchase, repeated, “I have enough. I’m done buying.” Then there was the third greenhouse. Maybe I thought I could keep my MHLFFTY a secret by buying at more than one location, however, that has fallen away as I returned more than once to the first greenhouse.
Overall, the palette of my yard flowers has shifted. In past years, I’ve opted for bright mixes of colors, trying new combinations in some areas while staying purely traditional in others. I wanted a riot of color to greet me as I drove into the yard.
A year ago, things changed. With bright red-orange begonias already purchased, I stopped before I got to the door and said, “Can I exchange these for white?”
A psychologist might have a good time trying to explain the shift in color preference. Maybe it has to do with getting older. Maybe it has to do with just wanting a change. Whatever. I know that, when it comes to annuals, I like a little mix of colors these days, but a lot of what I look for is the lightness and brightness of white and chartreuse.
Another thing has shifted as well. I love annuals but today in my yard, perennials are gaining ground, literally. From my mother I have roses, lilacs, peonies, phlox and a vine that I can’t identify. It returns year after year to wind around a trellis and offer fruit of little hard berries in a sphere-like bloom. I am adding coneflowers (lots of them!) and blanket flowers and transplanting irises to areas where they receive more sun. This year I’ve been rewarded with even more iris blossoms in dark purple, lavender and pale yellow.
There can be side-effects with MHLFFTY. One of them is cats. It’s not only that the newly turned dirt may appear as an inviting litter-box to felines. It’s also that our Ginger Cat views any blade of grass that wiggles, any clod of dirt that rolls or even the hand rake moving through the soil as something she must pounce on, wrestle with and conquer.
Wild critters are also another side effect. I blame my first loss of the season, a protulaca, on Bambi. I put two in a pedestal planter and a few mornings later, there were none. One of them was gone and the other was on the ground. Now it may have been deer or it might have been a raccoon, but the challenge for me was, do I replace the lost one and risk losing it again? Or do I cut my loses and nurse the survivor along?
Having MHLFFTY, of course I replaced it. And upon going to the green house to get one, I repeat, one plant, of course I walked out with yet another box filled with both perennials and annuals. (Thankfully I didn’t forget the portulaca.)
May is ending and with it, MHLFFTY is lessening. Over the Memorial Day weekend, I planted the last of the perennials (one more coneflower and another Veronica Speedwell). I put geraniums and ivy in a newly painted planter on the patio. As I turned to the petunias and creeping jenny, I found that I was out of potting soil, doggone it all anyhow.
No problem. I know where the greenhouses are!