I May Not Have Made Myself Clear

I don't like the finer points of being outdoors. I don't mind going outside and can appreciate the beauty of nature, but everything that goes along with it, well for lack of a better word - blech.

I hate bugs though they seem to love me. I don't much care for water. I'm not overly keen on trees and flowers can bugger off.

But what I really want to talk about right now is the flower part. For some reason as a pseudo-homeowner I feel it is my right to have a flower garden. A few years back I took it upon myself to scalp a patch of my lawn and convert it into one. I like pansies fine. And pink tulips. And I'm fond of mums.

I hate leafy, bushy flowers. So, naturally I filled my flower garden with the leafiest, bushiest flowering bastards I could find. Some of them I chose like the idiot calla lilies and the pink tulips. Others appeared there like the other lily and the irises.

Of course, the flower bed is partly run by my husband and he likes the stupid bushy, leafy idiot plants. However, when it comes to tending the flower bed it all comes to me.

Fact: no matter how harmless something seems outside of the flower bed once it goes past the stone border it becomes 10-times more terrifying.

In general I love slugs. I like to pet their backs and poke their eye stalks. I am fairly sure they don't mind. Well, that or they absolutely hate it. One can never be too sure with slugs.

However, the instant a slug enters the garden it is a cursed creature who can't be touched, looked at or even admired - perhaps even slightly disgusting to look at and in no way approachable.

Towards the end of summer I get fed up with the overgrown bushy monstrosity in front of my house and grab a pair of kitchen shears (I don't actually own anything to use in the flower bed) and hack everything down. I think there are certain rules and regulations to follow for cutting back plants, but my personal motto is "make it gone." See, gardening turns me into some Larry the Cable Guy kind of crazy person.

Just a few days ago I was happily pulling up mint when I ran into a slug. The horror! But I persevered. I was happily hacking away at the calla lilies and each one of those leaves was filled with dirt and grubs! How friggin' gross.

My taking back of the garden was put on hold until I could come up with gloves. Apparently they don't make gloves that go all the way up the arms. Why? Long sleeves aren't the same. They're not approved or gardening like gardening gloves are. Things can get through the fabric; I'm pretty sure of that.

Why do I insist on keeping up on the garden? I ask myself that all the time. The answer comes in multiple parts. Partially a lot of the plants in the garden come back year after year whether I want them to or not, so I am forced into doing something. If I didn't have the persistent plants I would cave from time to time and dig plots for the mums and pansies and their ilk so I could watch them die.

Perhaps my best bet is to kiss the real flowers good-bye and buy plastic flowers for the flower bed and adhere a fake background to my house kind of like the finer fish tanks have. That way I can enjoy nature the way it was meant to be enjoyed - in a completely artificial way and as always from the safety of my own home.