Things I Suck At Thursday

In life, I am good at a few things. I am pretty good at a moderate number of things. I am bad at and endless number of things. In a weird way, I am most proud of the things I completely suck at.

Like gardening.

I always wanted to have a garden. I have never lived anywhere that is conducive to gardening, however. For a long while, I moved every 3 to 4 months. (which is not conducive to gardening)  My apartments in Washington and California did have balconies, but they were south facing in climates that featured temperatures over 100 degrees for multiple days in a row. (my plants got fried) My last place was really a room in somebody else's house. Though I'm sure they wouldn't have minded if I had planted things in the yard, it didn't feel like MINE. (which is really not conducive to gardening) But now, in my little yellow apartment by the beach, I have some space to garden.

I opted for containers...veggies in the sunny front and shade loving flowers in the shady back (and a few shade tolerant greens for good measure). I have had great fun trolling the nurseries and discount shops for cuttings and containers. And I've become obsessed with things like rainfall.

For the most part, I've left the existing plants alone. First of all, I don't really know what care these plants need. Secondly, they are mostly bulbs and low lying ground cover, which are pretty much self sufficient, in my limited knowledge. Thirdly, I've been gallivanting off to the far corners of the globe and going on 24 hour relay races, leaving me very little time to devote to gardening. The plants have done pretty well on their own.

So have the weeds.

So last weekend, I decided to dedicate a bit of time to pruning and weeding the flower beds, just to clean things up a bit.

I learned that even though I've never really had an aversion to dandelions (I like their sunny yellow color and puffy white snowball seeds), dandelions do not play well with other plants. The creep in and take over and crowd everything else out. So they had to go.

I pulled out wandering grass and little miniature-wheat-looking weeds and an overabundance of clover.

I also dug up and threw away a bunch of sunflowers. Because I mistakenly identified them as weeds.

I'm sorry sunflowers! Its just that before you bloom, you resemble evil beanstalks! And I really suck at gardening.

Hopefully, I'll do better with my containers.