Don’t let the banner fool you. Me and Gardening?

Not so much. Those are my husband’s efforts, and they only look that pretty because I stay far, far away.

I want to be the princess of gardening, I really do. Every spring, I have visions of a beautifully landscaped yard. I want a vegetable garden that is the envy of my neighbors and capable of feeding a small army. I see pages of Southern Living dancing in my head. As a result, I end up spending a ridiculous amount of money at my local home and garden store, and getting in way over my head. It’s my own personal brand of spring fever.

Spring in Louisiana, all two weeks of it, is perfect. And its’ perfection lures me to create grandiose plans for the garden of my dreams. I fantasize, I plan and I drastically overspend, all while my husband grumbles, sighs and tries to stop the cycle of garden mayhem that strikes every year about this time.

Because said husband knows something  very, very true about me:

I have the memory of a goldfish, and a green thumb of death, both of which are not conducive to gardening.

My goldfish memory always lets me conveniently forget that spring eventually turns to summer, and in summer, Louisiana gets hotter than Satan’s sauna. Weather over 100 degrees with humidity at 100 percent…who wouldn’t want to be outside in that happy state? Me, that’s who. To make matters worse, bugs emerge that are the size of small cars, and lie in wait to attack me the second I walk outside. Giant bugs…think Mothra, but with teeth.

Heat and bugs….those are two horsemen of Bayou-Mama’s personal apocalypse.

If that were not problem enough, I always have my green thumb of death. I kill any plant I try to cultivate. I could kill a cactus because I am a gardening moron, and should have my own support group or something. Gardening apparently takes a part of the brain that I just don’t use. Or maybe it just takes someone willing to risk the heat and Mothra-size bugs with only a kinked water hose for protection.

Good thing for me, Bayou Husband is not so afflicted. Bad news for him, that just means that he gets to do all the work while I “supervise.”

 Last year’s garden succumbed to my green thumb of death, despite efforts to quarantine it from my influence. It was truly tragic, and made my husband swear off gardening forever.

So, when we planted the garden again this year (the fever is contagious by the way) we’ve tried a little experiment with raised beds for all our vegetables. I think the raised beds are to ensure that my green thumb of death is not mysteriously spread simply through the ground I walk on.

We have tomatoes:

Squash and zucchini:

An assortment of peppers:

and a few marigolds for good measure:

I’ll keep you updated on the precarious progress of this year’s garden. It’s sure to be a soap opera, but I’ll try to keep the histrionics to a minimum.