The Garden War

Let me once more state that I am possibly North America's worst gardener. In three years, my entire vegetable yield has been two dozen carrots, one meal's worth of green beans, two salads worth of lettuce, seventeen strawberries, and about a dozen tomatoes. Seriously, that's three years worth. Granted, I grow my vegetables in containers and I only plant a few of them, but still. My actual produce output is wildly out of proportion with how much I actually have planted with high hopes, and ended up swearing at three months later.

From a floral point of view, I only have one, narrow, pathetic little bed by the front door... Each spring, Brian and I take a stroll through a local nursery, and buy whatever annuals appeal to us at the time. One year it was petunias and pansies, one year it was dahlias and some red stuff. And Mario will never forget the year it wasn't flowers at all, but those two dozen carrots I mentioned before. (Maaaaaaaaaan, did I take flak for THAT.)

I tell you these shameful facts in order to put things in context. I am a terrible gardener, but I keep at it because I enjoy it. I love adding compost each spring, love the look of freshly laid mulch, love stopping by the front door on my way in the house to pull out a weed or two. Love it all.

I just suck at it.

Which leads us to The Garden War. I have long eyed our front yard and envisioned replacing most of the predictable grass with flowers, shrubs, and yes, vegetables. Mario, understandably, wants to hear nothing about this. I suspect that, if my previous efforts had revealed a spectacular Green Thumb, he would be more open to the idea. But as things currently stand, it is a huge point of contention between us.

Please spare me the whole "why don't you do that in your back yard" thing. When I sit outside during the summer, I don't sit on the patio in the back, I sit on our deck in the front. Always have, and conceivably always will. So shouldn't the front be the place where I can look out over my beautiful garden?

You know I'm using the phrase "beautiful garden" loosely, right?