One seed can start a garden

We have people visiting, but they had to go hang out with family today and see the Washington Monument, so my husband and I worked in our garden all day.

When we moved into this house a year ago, the backyard was a horrible mess of weeds and trash. And not just sort of tame, suburban weeds and trash, but huge, thorny, stinky, sharp-edged, toxic, city weeds and trash. And bones. Still, bones resurface every now and then.

Anyway, my husband and my brother-in-law, who visited us right after we moved (I still get a kick of writing about my "husband" and my "brother-in-law" even though I've been married 2 years-- and from now on my husband is D so I can stop writing "my husband") cleaned up the yard in the 109 degree D.C. summer heat. Eventually, we planted things and more things. We put in a little pathway, and now we have a birdhouse out there...

So today, we were sitting outside drinking coffee and looking at this one corner of the garden where everything was thriving, but it was also like a plant war: a huge oregano plant taking over everything, and phlox fighting for supremacy with the oregano, and basil that exploded, and under all that were these snapdragons and dianthus that were practically smothered. We decided to spend the day moving things and replanting. We moved a lot of plants, and bought some superbells and some zinnias and some petunias and potted those. So now there are lots of new plants out there with the tomatoes and things.

I love the yard and the deck with their plants and flowers. There are bees all over the phlox, which is good because I have been worried about bees.

The thing is, I spent a lot of my life thinking that I was not good at gardening. I killed a few plants in my youth. But then, I had a best friend who is the garden queen, and from her I learned that planting things is fun. Then later one day in my Chapel Hill life, D and I planted our first garden-- I extracted a lot of promises that I was not in charge of it before I agreed, but I found that I love to get my hands dirty. It's great. And actually there's a study that says that dirt is some kind of anti-depressant.

And it turns out I am a fine gardener. Most things I plants live. And I realized that even the best gardeners, like the woman I work for, have plants who die in their charge. There's this one yard, for example, in which everything keeps dying. Who knows why.

Outside right now, everything is doing fine except the lavender, which is all white-brown. D says it looks like a ghost.

So it is. If anyone knows how to fix lavender, let me know. We already tried putting white rocks under it, because it does not like humidity and white rocks are supposed to help.

You'll find a picture of the garden at the bottom of the posts (if I can get it up. I need a tutorial in posting pictures).

The question, again, is not a question:

Go plant something. Buy a pot and a cheap plant and put it in your office or your bedroom. Or plant your whole backyard with whatever likes hot summertime. Or if you have a garden, plant something new you've never planted before.

(If it dies, plant something else.)