What I hate about Barbara and Jim’s Garden, Part 2

It’s been awhile since I wrote the posts detailing what I like about Barbara and Jim’s Garden, and “what I hate, part 1”, but I still have my list and pictures, so I want to complete the trilogy.   I don’t think I’ll match Jim’s “Top 20 things I hate about Barbara’s Garden”, but I do have a few more to add.

I’ll group the first category into “clothing related issues”

People who garden go through a lot of clothes, particularly when its 160 degrees in the shade. Multiple changes a day aren't uncommon.

Regarding those multiple changes of clothing....it isn't a good idea to garden in your everyday clothes. You need special "gardening clothes" that generally come from the 49-cent last-chance rack at Goodwill. So that means the clothes that come off when its time to change into the gardening outfit frequently end up in interesting places.

Likewise, old disgusting clothes or shoes, never die, they just get recycled for gardening. The smellier the better. These gardening shoes wouldn't make this list if they actually stayed in the garden. But when I see them making an appearance in public, like church or in a restaurant, it makes me long for the old days where I would have simply tossed them in the trash then claimed ignorance of their whereabouts. Just call me Marcia Anthony.

The next category I will call “things I don’t have because of the garden.  Now granted, I  also have many other things that cost more money than the garden…..kids in college, nice cars, wonderful trips and vacations, pets, good food to eat, etc, etc.    But for whatever reason the garden gets blamed probably because while we’ve had all those other expenses for years, the garden is a relatively new one and it gets lumped into the “household items and other misc. stuff” category:

Do you like my big, huge, blingy-diamond?? Oh wait.....that's right, I don't HAVE a diamond ring! You see, when we got engaged, then married over 27 years ago, we were so young and poor we got a tiny, cheap set at the Pekin mall. Needless to say, it didn't last as long as our marriage, and 4 years ago it broke beyond repair. I got a new wedding band, but we decided to wait on the diamond until our 25th, which was 2 years away. Of course by then we were moving and changing jobs, and kids were graduating college and starting college, and we had to buy a new house, and the house had a big garden and needless to say, I never have gotten a replacement. Or maybe he's just waiting to make sure this relationship is the "real thing" first.

This picture represents just one of the inside house projects that are sacrificed on behalf of the Outside. I'd like to have a tile backsplash here, but instead I have happy trees, and burning bushes and shaded beds with important Latin-sounding names outside the window.

Even though we buy lots of wine, visit wineries, and belong to a wine club, we still have just this little wine rack bought from wine-racks-r-us about 10 years ago. I did get a little wine refrigerator this year, but we could obviously still use more storage. I had something nice all picked out this Spring, but then we remembered it was time to mulch and there went that idea.

One of the many gardening expenses. Heck, who needs bedroom curtains when you can have piles and piles of mulch. I do like this color much better than last year's though (and that's not a joke)

My water bill...no explanation needed.

The last category I’ll just call “miscellaneous things”

Allergies. I've never had them in the past, and now I find myself craving Claritin and Benadryl and Ibuprofen almost daily. I'm sure the garden isn't entirely to blame, but I'm guessing the same trees and bushes and flowers that draw the birds and bees and butterflies and hummingbirds to the yard don't help the sinus headaches.

I don't actually have anything against the gardening books, I just think its funny how they are all ginormous and weigh about a ton. No "pocket-sized book of plant names" here. Surely there must be an app for the "A to Z Guide to Every Plant in the Entire Universe" collection.

This is one of the gates into our backyard. I like our gates. What I don't like is that with all the in & out and rolling wheelbarrows around and hauling mulch and tools, and trimming and replanting plants to sunnier or shadier spots, the gates tend to be left open occasionally. And open gates with a blind dog and a "neighborly dog" aren't a particularly good combination.

One of the best parts of having a garden is showing off the pictures. But those pictures have to stored . And the resulting file of 4000 flower pictures makes it hard to find an actual picture of your children or your vacation or your Christmas morning, or the things that used to be in our photo files.