So it’s the night before we head up to Buffalo for ‘The Fling’! and of course I’m unprepared.  Naturally you would think I could focus on something like finding a phone charger or making sure the car has gas, but instead, after weeks of neglecting this blog my priority is to put a post up.  Perhaps it’s the peer pressure of peers I have yet to meet?  They’re all fellow bloggers or garden writers or videographers or who knows what else, but they all have a thing in common, and that’s a regular online presence so I think I should dust off my presence real quick before I go.

These cannas have been sitting in a black garbage bag on the driveway for two months… but suddenly it’s a priority to get them planted, and a weed a bed that’s been covered in weeds all spring…

So why am I not ready?  There were good intentions when I went through the laundry to see if I had a few stain-free shirts to pack, but then I ended up cleaning out the whole closet, the car needed air in a tire so out came the vacuum, towels and windex to detail the whole interior, there were a few coleus cuttings to plant so I fertilized everything in the garden before spraying all the daylilies with deer repellant… they haven’t been sprayed at all this year… and that takes me to the cannas.  I took a look at my nails and realized the dogs had better manicures than I did so there I sat with soap and a brush, clippers and a file, and cleaned them all up, but then went outside for “one last” look at the garden and ended up ripping out tons of daisies to make room for the cannas.  Don’t even ask if I wore the gloves which were sitting just a few feet away.

The cannas did not go into the tropical bed.  That’s become a mess of self-sown wildflowers and a few neglected daylilies even though tropicals are what should really line this path to the pool.

I will claim that it’s not my fault, and I’m sure my nails will clean right up now that they’ve been warned, so might as well mow the lawn quick.

The daylilies are very nice now that we had some rain.  Here they are alongside the Queen of the Pairie who is looking more tired each year.

Truth is I really don’t want to leave the garden.  I rarely say this but after enduring the heat, and choosing the path of watering, and then a day and night of steady rain, the garden looks good.  Not REALLY good as in there are no weeds in sight and the mulch is fresh and it looks like someone gave thought to design, but it looks like a riot of color, all flowery on top of green on top of plants which seem happy to be there and I’m loving it this week.

Ending on a houseplant?  Philodendron maybe ‘White Princess’ out for her summer vacation and loving the heat and humidity.

So I want to enjoy it but sometimes time away is good as well.  I could use some adult supervision and maybe another point of view will steer me away from obsessing about houseplants which also just happened.  They look so happy with all the rain and warmth and maybe I bought a new palm to see if it would stop my obsessing over that palm for the last two weeks, but for now I need reasons why I shouldn’t go any further.  Just because my philodendron has roots searching for some kind of support doesn’t mean I should just build something for it and repot it and start growing big leaved things on moss poles… no that’s a bad idea.  This is why I need to get away.  I’m sure being with a group of garden-crazy plant people for four days is just what I need to come back to reality.

But I’m keeping the palm no matter what anyone says.  Have a great week!