Dinnercraft helps bring your (and our) protracted adolescence to an end. Our authors cover topics ranging from cooking and eating, to home and garden, to crafting and DiY, and all the rest of the things you find yourself caring about these days.
My Black Thumb
This is supposed to be a home and garden blog. Which poses something of a problem for me.
Because…I don’t garden.
Or as my husband so lovingly puts it, I kill everything I touch.
My earliest memories of gardening were not pleasant. Mostly, they involve being forced to pull weeds in the blazing heat as punishment for some childhood transgression, like the one involving my little brother’s eye and a pencil.
So it shouldn’t take a psychology degree to figure out why the feeling of dirt under my fingernails provokes an instant “ick” sensation rather than a sense of harmony with nature.
But I’m a lot older now. Old enough to have a yard. Old enough to teach my kids to grow baby lettuces and herbs and little carrots. Old enough to get past my childhood trauma and do the responsible thing and start a proper garden.
And it’s not that I haven’t ever tried. I planted herbs in pots. But they all died.
Something about having to trim the leaves of the basil before it flowered…I couldn’t quite figure it out.
I’ve bought potted plants and arranged them artfully on the patio. But I never had any idea what to do with them once they got there.
My husband can probably fill you in on what happened.
I’ve basically come to terms with the fact that I am not a gardener. I can deal with my mother’s snide comments and my friends’ helpful – and unheeded – suggestions.
But I can’t help wondering sometimes, on a beautiful Saturday when all the productive people are out planting and mulching and weeding, what the fact that I am lying in bed with my husband playing “Mario Party 5″ says about me.
Maybe my refusal to garden means I’m refusing to grow up.
But maybe not.
Maybe I just don’t like dirt.
