Irish Daisy

My grandma was a gardener – that is how I think of her and how I will remember her. Gardeners are gritty people, at home in the dirt. They are often at war with the elements; battling pests and weather and nature to coax, or wrest, bounty from the earth. Not that she didn't dress up; Nana was elegant when the occasion called, with swirly skirts, high, high-heels, special jewelry and fabulous lipstick. She was classy and so gorgeous. But I remember her best in a jacket and sturdy trousers, padding carefully in slippers through the morning dew to her garden to harvest beans, tomatoes or cucumbers. She used to grow cucumbers for me, and would send pictures so that I could see how my cucumber, carefully arranged on a re-purposed Styrofoam tray, was growing. Her garden was lush and bountiful, and huge – with beans strung so tall she would disappear in the rows. Not that that was hard. Nana wasn't very tall, but she was mighty in spite of her stature – a pocket-sized dic...

I mean, I do garden, I like growing things. And the plants around my house are reasonably attractive, but that's it. I recently started planting seeds, instead of buying nursery plants, to save money. I am ridiculously excited whenever they sprout. When volunteers sprout from self-seeding flowers planted the year before…hoo-boy, the glee. Sometimes, they don’t sprout at all. Sometimes, they sprout and die before developing. And sometimes they achieve plant stasis: they sprout, they grow and then they stop somewhere between seedling and actual plant and never change at all until winter comes and they finally curl up and die. I really have no idea why any of this happens. No, stop it. Don’t give me advice. I mean it, really. Bubble flowers! Come back every year if I remember not to dig them up... I like to be good at things, really good at them. I like to succeed and I am frequently accused of being an over achiever, or type A, or a perfectionist…you get the picture. I...