The Scene In Which Apparently Gardening Fails Me

I have two very major confessions to make, friends. Be gentle.

First. (And this, if you know me and have, say, driven past my house in the recent weeks is not so much a confession as an acknowledgement.

MY YARD LOOKS HORRIBLE.

Seriously, summer has wreaked some HAVOC on the yard. Dead. Crunchy. Brown. The flowers have all gone to seed and past it. The bushes grew out of control and resemble sea urchins. The phlox is spiny and woody and brown (and half-dead thanks to some overzealous mowing by one of my neighbors, but it was on his side, so that's not even contributing to the awfulness).

And I just need to get out there and clean it up. I know I do. (And I don't want to hear that if I stopped writing this blog and just did it it would be done, because this blog only took me 7 minutes to write and my yard is going to take many, many more minutes than that thankyouverymuch.)

Confession #2 is not really a confession but a confirmation of what you already might know having seen my yard, and that is that I really like color palettes in the purple/pink/green range. Purple phlox. Butterfly bush. Lavender.

I like THINGS TO MATCH.

Naturally, the potted plants that dot my porch also contain pink and purple plants throughout the summer months. But as the summer dried those suckers up faster than you could've fried an egg on the sidewalk some days this August, last week I decided I was going to put my fall plants in.

I happened to be at Lowe's with time to kill and hit the gardening section, where I was promptly disappointed by the lack of creative fall offerings. There were mums. And....mums. And....wait, wait....mums.

For someone who was craving some ornamental cabbage, maybe a few fall grasses, and such, it was a letdown.

Nonetheless, I rebounded, and even did something that for me (the person who likes THINGS TO MATCH!) was way crazy.

I picked twenty small mum plants off a buy-one-get one shelf with absolutely NO color indication. The photos ranged from pinks to yellows to reds and oranges and purples. I even went so far as to deliberately pick plants off different shelves and from different pre-packaged flats. I was determined to have a colorful splash out front, if only to make up for the hideousness that is the rest of the yard.

So I eagerly went home, planted all my mums, watered dilligently, and waited for the first signs of color.

This weekend, they began to bloom.

They are ALL YELLOW.

Every. Single. One.

Friends, I swear, I couldn't make this up if I tried.