Jitterbug
It's perfect gardening weather, but I am so not in the mood.  These days, all the gardening centers have slashed the prices on their remaining stock of plants.  Discounts galore, and I should be pulling on my garden golashes to do some planting so that the babies will have a chance to put down roots before the crisp weather moves in.  It's just that now that the green flush of spring has passed into the distance, I'm over my gardening infatuation.  Perhaps that fledging love I felt in spring, that urge to dig in the dirt, perhaps it was just a crush and not true romance... 

While we were on vacation, my fledgling spring plantings were overtaken by the most vigorous batch of weeds I've ever seen.  Before we left, I'd weeded the plantings clean.  In just two weeks, some of the weeds had grown two feet high.  It's like alien life sprung from the earth fully formed.  The suckers are amazingly healthy.  The weeds make my fledgling perennial bed look lush and overflowing with emerald life.  If i didn't know the weeds would soon choke out the intended plants, I'd let 'em go for a while, just to fill things in a bit. 

Instead of doing any weeding tonight, I put on my walking shoes for a stroll around the neighborhood.  Down the road a bit, I caught the refrain of an old-time country song.  The woman's voice crooning over the airwaves sounded a little someone from the Carter Family "Cole Miner's Blues" era.  Following the tune, I discovered one of my neighbors has a jukebox in his garage.  There it was, a glittering retro speciman, right between the lawn mower and the garbage bin.  Somehow, with it's chrome detailing and the curves of a Cadillac, the contraption look right at home next to a station wagon.  In the front yard,  my neighborhor watered his daisies to music that made me want to pull weeds while wearing a pair of cowboy boots.  I waved, and he gave me a nod in time with the music.  Just about then, the record changed to a big band rendition of the Chattanooga Choo Choo. 

Now that's the tool every gardener needs--a jukebox.


- posted by Laurie @ 9:12 AM