Flower Power

I’m a flower guy.

That’s something I neither wanted nor expected. Before last spring, my only aspiration for my yard was “not mud.” That’s easier said than done when you have two pigs. Their grazing and rooting annihilated all ground covering. The only way I could keep any plant matter alive in their zone of destruction was to bisect my yard with a temporary fence to let half of it grow while surrendering the other fifty percent to the ravages of my miniature swine herd. My main concern through all of this was not the opinions of my neighbors (They can't think less of me because their opinions of me are already at rock bottom), but for my floors inside. If I could keep grass alive, the pigs wouldn’t track in mud, and I wouldn’t have to vacuum. No matter how complicated the scheme, my ultimate motivation is always laziness. It’s just a shame that I have to work so hard to try to do less.

Last March was a turning point. That's when I began to rethink my front yard, where no pigs grazed. It, too, was a disaster, but of a different sort. It had plenty of green, but little of it could be called grass. It was mostly weeds with some filler. Think earth-toned trash and some rocks. It looked horrible up close but okay from a distance. Its best angle was from Google Earth. I thought that maybe, without the challenge of insatiable herbivores, I could actually make the right kind of plants grow there. To that end, I got in touch with Waffle’s godfather, Hank, who’s retired from his full time science job and now designs other people’s landscaping for fun. My idea of personal enjoyment doesn’t involve manual labor or even acknowledging that “outside” exists, but to each their own. Hank drew up plans for what to plant where, and it all looked stunning, at least in my head. His plans were pencil drawings on graph paper instead of fully rendered 3D images, which is what happens when you badger family friends into doing things for you for free. I was fully on board with his diagram until he dropped one minor detail: To make the landscaping plans work, the yard really needed a retaining wall. There went my whole summer.

I spent the next several months moving dirt, gravel, and stone. Don’t get me wrong: I would have much rather paid someone to do this for me. As cheap as I am, I’ll still pay money if it gets me out of doing real work. But our contractor at the time was in month eight of the “two week” project to build a pantry. If I tried to hire someone else to build the retaining wall, it would have been done sometime in late 2038. Against all odds, I finished the retaining wall by myself. It even looked nice as long as you didn’t examine it too closely or hold up a level. That judgmental device is now banned on my property. Afterward, I planted trees, flowers, and shrubs and surrounded it all with yard fabric and mulch. Then I watered and weeded to make sure the things I wanted to live stayed alive and the things I wanted to die stayed dead. It was a lot of work, but the results were beautiful. More importantly, they were complete. My work outside was done.

Except that it wasn’t. Flash forward to a year later.