Planting (with Mom!)

Have you ever had a project that needed to be done but you felt too intimidated to even start it (so you keep putting it off)? That’s how I felt about planting in our backyard. Thankfully, even though I’m a big dummy when it comes to plants, my Mom is something of a green genius, so I’ve been waiting until she visited this week to get started. This lady knows her hosta from her honeysuckle, her petunias from her peonies, her hydrangea from her hyacinth, her…well, you get the idea.

I had a few days off for their visit, so we spent the better part of the first day at several gardens and nurseries looking for just the right plants. It was a bit hotter than you might want it to be if you’re standing in the hot sun for hours, but we were determined to find the right specimens (and Todd found out that running through the nursery sprinklers can also help cool oneself down).

Once we found what we needed, we set our alarms and got up early the next morning to beat the heat while we prepared our planting beds. We removed two long rectangles of grass from in front of our deck and broke up the soil with a garden mattock. I’m not that strong to begin with, but let me tell you, my muscles were so sore the next day! If you’re looking for a hobby that will simultaneously give you wrestler arms and lush green surroundings, I highly suggest gardening.

Once our soil was tilled and soft, we mapped out where our plants should go, and started to relocate them in their new homes. I chose to do a lot of lamb’s ear because I’m a bit obsessed with it. It’s impossible for me to pass it in a garden, park, or stranger’s front lawn, without running up to touch it. So. Soft.

We got a lot of planting done that morning, but we had a 24 hour bout of monsoon the next day and steady rain ever since, so I haven’t gotten to finish the job yet. I told my parents though that those planting hours were some of my favorite their whole visit.

Gardening is something that I completely associate with my Mom, and I’ll always remember my high school friends who were stunned to see her outside at 11pm gardening under flood lights. I just thought all Moms did that. In addition to the green thumb that goes hand in hand with my Mom, my Dad’s signature hobby is guitar and I was lucky enough to have him playing on the deck outside while my Mom and I were planting. It was such a memorable experience to have so many sights and sounds of of my childhood home here in my “grown up” home. I couldn’t help it, I just had to take a mental picture to freeze the memory in time.

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