When it comes to gardening in Texas, there's often something to complain about. I look at other gardener's blogs, see the photos of their well established beds (as opposed to our brand new areas that are just barely past being dead grass) and I am envious of their ability to rest in the surety of a successful venture.
I'll see photos of, say, some other blogger's bed packed with fully flowering plants providing a sea of color in front of a statue and rather than simple admiration, I find myself experiencing Bluebonnet Envy.
I have two bluebonnet plants in a front bed that had grown from seed (something I am apparently willing to somehow take extra credit for) and both of them have been routinely attacked by snails/slugs and a lack of rain and/or sun at the times they needed both and have subsequently failed to thrive.
I have other plants I bought at a nursery (why does that seem like admitting failure in this context?) in another bed in the back that are doing well, but are just beginning to show blooms.
I know in my head that this little patch of bluebonnets in the back will become a sturdy lake of blue in their own time and will provide me with a fair stand of seeds to take back out front and try again for next year. But in my heart, I keep looking at those puny plants out front and somehow using them as the measure of me as a Texas gardener.
On top of all that it hailed this morning. Not for long I am grateful to say, but with a ferocity and size that helped me realize I ought to be grateful to have any plants doing anything interesting anywhere. AND that I ought to spend less time fretting over two plants that aren't going to make much headway this year and be happy I have so many others, variously from seed and from nursery and from their own reproduction, that are not only surviving the insults of a Texas Spring, but thriving.
So. Here's to all plants! Here's to Spring! Here's to Texas!
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