Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m a schizophrenic, and so am I.
Frank Crow
Much to my personal anguish and despair, it has come to my attention that my beloved wife has developed a sever, debilitating, expensive malady known as “Green Thumb disease”. Contrary to popular opinion “Green Thumb”, does not construe an appendage dripping in Miracle Grow, but rather a nimble digit compulsively peeling greenbacks for the purchase of plants.
I suppose the affliction was brought on in the poor woman by Crested Buttes’ lengthy winter season. A frozen, deathly cold time of year that lasts approximately eleven & one half months. A time when sufferers of ‘Green Thumb’ are confined to re-potting the same houseplant, time after time, or sent scratching and clawing at ground frozen harder than the Hope Diamond. So it is during that precious two weeks of Crested Butte summer that these wretched souls are released to find some morsel of solace in rooting about the dirt in hopes of nursing a pitiful sprout to appear before the next blizzard sets in.
At first the signs of the impending disorder were subtle. My Soldier of Fortune magazines were being slowly replaced by Burpee Seed catalogs. Sail & True Life gave way to Better Homes & Gardens.
Dinner conversations went like this:
Her: “I’m thinking perennials, you know like Apricot Chrysanthemum, perhaps bedded in Scabiosa, with a touch of Banana Custard Verbascum, and Potter’s Purple Buddleia surrounded by dwarf Salvia and Petite Delight or maybe a Rudbeckia Primadonna….whadda think?”
Him: “Huh?”
Her: “The problem is the Carcinogens, dieback & Candytuft milky spore, Funkia and Globe thistle. Then you got your leafhoppers and Blackspot, moles, mice, mites, mildew, moss ,and mealybugs. Those pesky Slugs, snails, slips, Salvia Splendens and Snapdragon scab could be a problem….”
Him: “Huh?”
Her: “I’m gonna need to arm myself… Fish emulsion & fungicides!! Yes yes a bit of Bactericides, with a touch of Antidesiccants, Beta vulgaris, & nitrogen-fixing Hysoppus, some Phosphorus Pimpinella Pheromone, gloves, hat, an assortment spades, rakes & some soothing music….
“NO!!” I screamed, I would not have Lionel Ritchie blubbering from our yard…
“No, no Vivaldi’s Four Seasons I’m thinking. Plants love him…
“Lookit my love, this whole thing’s gonna be over in two weeks then you’ll be fine…I’ll get you a nice cactus or maybe a real Christmas tree this year…”
There are several plant nurseries in Crested Butte. It is a very lucrative business as you only have to work two weeks of the year and can retire to the South of France for the other 50 weeks on the profits.
My wife has a liberal revolving charge account at our neighborhood nursery, the Alpengardner, an account that keeps me charging heavily at the business next door, Red Mountain Liquor. I have no idea how either will be paid, or what the out-come will be…liverwort or liver–rot.
So, in a frenzy of flying dirt, fish ponds with squirting frogs & bubbling bird baths have been installed, Aspens, firs, maples, hanging, crawling, flowering vegetation has arrived in convoys from the Alpengardner. It was when a limousine arrived one morning to transport my wife to the nursery, I started to panic.
Suddenly one day this strange affliction blossomed into hysteria.
“AAAAIIIYYYEE!” Screamed my wife from the rose garden seizing my already overworked ticker.
“APHIDS!!”
War was declared. It seems the reason Bush didn’t find Weapons Of Mass Destruction in Iraq is because they’re all in my garage labeled:
“DEATH TO APHIDS”
Things have settled down now for one simple reason. She’s run out of room, not being enough room left in our yard to swing a caterpillar. Finally I could relax & start working on 2nd mortgage applications to satisfy the massive nursery- liquor bill. That’s when I noticed her in negotiation with our neighbor for more land.
“Good News!” She exclaimed over dinner that night. “Dan and Marilyn are letting me plant a rose garden in their yard!!!”
I can only pray for snow.
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