I have a love-hate relationship with gardening.

I love flowers and trees.

I hate picking up sticks and weeding.

I did read a thing once that compared pulling weeds up by the roots to ripping someone’s spine out of their body and letting it dangle between your fingers, which I’m only a little embarrassed to admit made me enjoy it more. Now if they’d only find a similar metaphor for the endless stooping and scooping involved in picking up fallen branches and twigs…

I’m a big bulb person. Tulips are my favorite flower anyway, and I just love that you can plant things in the fall and ignore everything until brilliant colors pop up with no effort for at least a couple spring seasons before you have to dig them up and start again.

I am not good with potted flowers or things that are high maintenance. Total Black Thumb when it comes to that. I also resent annuals. If it doesn’t come back in subsequent years, what is the point? Annuals are for crops. Ornamentals should not require that much effort.

But oh, when I saunter through gardens and parks, I am enchanted. Like so many things, I don’t want to do the work. I want to skip to the good part where things are pretty and smell good. Is that so wrong?