The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

San Francisco Flower and Garden Show 2010

San Francisco Flower and Garden Show.

Is it the end of an era?

The economy seems to have closed in on my favorite garden event of the year.

The change of venue is disappointing enough: The Expo Center in San Mateo just does not have the same atmosphere as the Cow Palace.

The Cow Palace is a theater with a black backdrop reminiscent of the night sky—or a large stage. The lighting is much more dramatic, giving each garden a sense of existing somewhere other than a cavernous industrial building.

I talked my girlfriend (who isn’t exactly into gardening) into going with me. I told her she’d love it, and that even though it wasn’t at the Cow Palace that it’d be great.

Lord knows, I get into trouble when I go to these things alone.

I promised her that there would be one whole, giant industrial building entirely devoted to demonstration gardens.

I told her that she would get lots of ideas for her own garden.

She said that it’d better be worth her while. She warned me with the threat of crossing me off the list of certain party circles. I would be B-listed (like Samantha was in Sex In the City when she slept with the socialite’s husband), but I wouldn’t get to sleep with a socialite’s husband.

The Domino Effect.

I found some great urns and statuary on CraigsList. The person who sold them was offering them each at a certain price or—the kit and caboodle—for one low price.

“I’m just a girl who can’t say no”

As I mentioned in my last post, I have many, many, many garden projects that are in different states of doneness, mostly undone. I knew this when I decided to type in the word Craigslist and hit return, but I did it anyway.

So I went to look at these cool objects de garden art. I, being of weak mind and not so sound pocketbook said, “yes” to everything.

I had initially told this nice man that I couldn’t afford everything that he had. Here is how, with my superior negotiating skills, the scene played out.

Man selling statuary: “These urns over here are this much and those over there are that much and that one is this much.”

Me: “How much for everything together?”

Man selling statuary: “I will give it to you for this much”

Me: “O.K.”

So now I sit staring at all the stuff sitting in my driveway. All I have to do is put it away right?

Wrong.

And the Oxalis Goes to...

Another garden project-pruning my ornamental pomegranate

It is that time of year when the rain stops for a few brief days, the air is clean and sweet and the sun peaks out from behind the billowy clouds and shines through the crisp blue sky directly on my garden.

This is not a good thing.

What this crystal clear day reveals is the ten thousand projects that have been festering all winter.

This is the kind of overwhelming feeling that makes you peel back your garden glove and look at your wrist watch wishing that the Red Carpet Oscar shows would start five or six hours early just so you can throw down your rake and run for the TV mumbling something about “having to watch what Kathryn Bigelow is wearing because she could be the first woman ever to win best director: This is an Historic Event.”

But you realize that the first Red Carpet show doesn’t even start until 4:00 and you can’t use that excuse, so there you stand, frozen, gripping your rake, a little bead of sweat starting to form on your brow. The sweat isn’t there from physical exertion but from the terror of gardening ADD.