My Retirement

Earlier this week, or maybe late last week, when the heat index was well into the three digit range and I found myself once again sweating beyond my comfort zone, I reached a decision.

I am retiring.

Not from anything that pays. Unfortunately, that happens sometime between 16 years from now and death, hopefully closer to the former than the latter. Like Christmas, that retirement is on the radar but there’s not yet any sense of urgency to it.

Instead, I’m retiring from gardening. I have tilled my last tulip and planted my last petunia.

It’s just not fun any more, I dread the thought of going out to deal with it, so I’m just not going to do it. It’s not like we’ll go hungry or the world will end.

I planted my last tomato plant a few years ago after I figured out that the average cost per tomato approached that of opium. Poppies are easier to grow, anyhow, so it’s not a surprise that the farmers in Afghanistan are making the decisions that they do.

Aside from the fact that the only plants I loathe more than tomatoes are rose bushes and poinsettias, there are trucks parked alongside the road all over the place. I can contribute to the full employment of these hard-working full-time farmers for far less than the cost of getting the grass stains out of my socks.

I have a genetic predisposition toward farming failures. Half of my family comes from that little spot in Oklahoma that’s right by where the panhandle hooks onto the rest of the state. It’s pretty close to the geographic center of the dust bowl of the 1930’s, and for years the best thing it grew was oil wells.

Not very good ones mind you, but just enough to allow the grandparents to keep on farming.

I had a client a few years ago who had lived a hard life, trying to scrabble a living out of rocks and poor soil.  One day, he drove up to my office in a new pickup, wearing clothes that didn't come from Goodwill and a new Stetson hat.  His wife had obviously just had her hair done at the beauty parlor, a treat formerly reserved for children's weddings and Christmas.

"All these years," he said, "we been doin' it the hard way.  You cain't make no money growing wheat or cattle.  The wife and I found out that you make money growing Wal Marts."  It seems that Mr. Sam had a hankerin' to put a new SuperCenter on this couple's little slice of heaven and wasn't afraid to write a check with more digits on it than my client had ever seen before.

He had the sense to cash it in, take the money and run.

My relatives that now own those farms in northwest Oklahoma recognize that now the money is not so much in oil wells, but now is in growing electricity. It looks like they'll be growing those great huge windmills from now on. The problem is, those are set a couple of miles apart and their farms happen to be in the “center median” rather than on the highway.

There’s not much money in medians, nor is there forced pooling as with oil and gas wells so that everyone in the area shares in the production. 

Growing the right crop just doesn't seem to be in my genes.

It’s been an especially hard year for production in North Carolina as well. We lost half of a Yaupon Holly tree next to the driveway to ice last winter, along with some of the “background” shrubs, and then about a month ago my favorite flowering peach tree just shriveled up and died within a few days.

This, after having survived the drought of the last few years, the ice storms, and being relocated in the yard 4 or 5 times before it finally found a home by the driveway.

Add to that the fact that the brutal heat has cooked all of the flowers in pots that go up the back steps and I’ve easily spent $200.00 just filling in the empty spots and nothing is growing to it’s potential – and this is not the first year – well, it’s time to fold it up.

So I’m announcing my retirement from gardening.

No plants will be “overwintered” in the basement ever again. Those on the patio will either be given to other people for adoption or allowed to meet their fate when the cold winds blow.

Of course, those blank spots in the beds have to be addressed. I can’t leave just bare dirt where the flowers were, or we’ll have our own dust bowl going on back there. That means I have to put together a landscape plan for the replacments.

I probably ought to work in some organic matter and till those spots up extra deep, too, and maybe add some of those crystals that help hold the water.

And, oh, wow – there are some stray crocus that are trying to peep through the dirt already. They shouldn’t be there for at least another six weeks. I wonder if I need to mulch those in better, so they won't cook, too?

Now how am I going to protect those from being stomped all over while re-doing the flower beds?

But I'm retiring from gardening.

Really I am.

Just as soon as I spray the roses again.