Is it spring already?

It's spring (not that you would know it by the weather here recently, but somewhere in the world it must be), and that means it's time for some advice on gardens. My advice is, don't have one.

Many of our neighbors' yards seem to have sprung right out of Better Homes and Gardens. They are awash in bold reds, yellows, blues, and purples. Delicate pink and white blossoms are bursting out on the trees.

My garden, by contrast, is something that would feature prominently in the Ugly Gardens Project. I lean more toward the earthy tones -- green, brown, that sort of thing. The "natural" colors of dirt, weeds, and a few struggling stems that have obviously, in the whole pollination thing, landed in a yard they never meant to land in. The sum total of things growing in my garden at present is as follows:

• 7 fragile, purple star-shaped flowers
  

• 479 nonfragile weeds

• A vast number of tall, brown things bearing a suspicious resemblance to dead sticks

• 1 peanut shell

In short, nothing in my garden at this moment has been put there by me, and nothing put there by me last year is anywhere to be seen. This is why smart people take up some other, more sensible hobby, like creating art from duct tape.

One of my neighbors, who is a master gardener, pointed out everything that was a weed in my garden and informed me that they all needed to go ASAP. "But I'm so successful at growing weeds," I protested. I also pointed out that at least the weeds had flowers on them, which was more than you could say for anything I'd actually planted.

Nevertheless, worried that someone would soon be calling Gardeners Against Weeds (GAW) over the state of our yard, I tackled some of the 479 weeds. I got about 11 of them. In Michigan, I never had weeds this early. Okay, maybe I did and just ignored them. Here, they sprout up in February and last until December, when everyone else is going to and fro with boatloads of cheer and happy poinsettias and fragrant pine trees, and my yard still has weeds gasping out threats of returning in a few months 17-fold. Which they have.

I think I am much better suited to a northern climate with a shorter growing season, something on the order of Iceland. Or possibly to a desert in the south. I was talking to a young man the other day from Arizona who, as a youth, was pressed into forced labor in his mother's vast midwestern garden. He is of the opinion that the rock gardens common to Arizona are far superior to yards with soil in which one must plant and nurture things. The sight of happy daffodils and daisies swaying in the gentle breeze -- which we have here in Maryland in abundance, although not in my garden -- still brings back disturbing memories of his chain gang days.

I ran across a book last night whose title struck a chord with me: The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden (if I don't have it completely right, you get the idea). Except for the tomato part -- and the man part -- I could have written this book (or at least the title). Far from desiring the perfect garden, though, my aim now is only to tip the delicate balance between weeds and flowers in favor of the flowers. And to find out if anything can be grown from a peanut shell.