Or, in my case, when a gardener's thoughts turn to reasonable excuses for not tucking the garden away. I HATE not having a reasonable excuse ready and, instead, have to rely on outright avoidance.
The other day my husband mentioned how nice it would be to have the tall flower bed stalks trimmed back before the snow falls. Before I could even summon my litany of reasons and rationalizations---hello! It's only October!---he hastily added that off course he understands that the birds benefit from picking the seeds out of the black-eyed Susans and the Echinacea, it's just that surely---I hate it when he calls me Shirley--they have finished their work by now and it wouldn't be selfish to trim at least a few back?
Good point. And he almost had me on that point, until he continued on to say how nice the garden would look when it was trimmed back to bare dirt.
Bare dirt?
Bare dirt?!
How would that look nice? How does he imagine that would even work?
Then I realized that he was imagining my winter garden would look a lot like the fields at DeGoede Bulb Farms after the tulip bulbs have all been harvested and then replanted for spring.
You might as well compare apples to artichokes, I told him. And besides, I firmly believe in leaving a few sharp stalks of last summer's phlox will discourage the elk from attempting to eat the tender new growth this spring.
My husband expressed a certain reservation to embracing my belief--I believe Shane snorted.
"How's that?" he asked.
I explained that when the elk go to take a big, greedy mouthful the sharp, dried stalks will poke them in their tender noses and they will run away in pain.
And, as soon as Shane stops laughing, I'm sure he'll see it my way.
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| My nose! My nose! |
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