A little garden sneakery

Spring has finally spring around these parts.

How do I know that?

Two words.

Cherry blossoms and Tulips (sorry, 4 words).

If you went to the University of Washington, Cherry blossoms are the first indicator that spring has finally arrived (followed in quick succession by  flip flops, fratty cut off shirts and inappropriately short skirts when it is still WAY too cold for skirts of any kind) Oh college...  

The UW cherry blossoms in the quad are such a breathtaking sight.  I still like to walk through the quad every year around this time to just take in the sweet smell and beauty of 
the white and pink blossoms drifting in the air. If you ever visit Seattle at this time of year, I highly recommend a walking tour of the UW campus, there are some unbeatable views.

Picture via

If you didn’t go to UW, but you live in Seattle, blooming tulips are probably your sign.

Since I never planted any tulips (I always forget to plant things in the fall/winter) and I don’t go to college anymore, so how would I know that these signs of spring have sprung?

The news. 

Duh.

They are a wealth of information, those newscasters.

Hard hitting stories they are reporting on these days.

Back in February, the local news team was warning that “Early spring may threaten Skagit tulip festival.” They were worried that they may bloom early because of our spring-ish weather back in February.  Luckily, the groundhog saw his shadow, the sun went away for a few more weeks and the tulips bloomed at the right time. Since our local annual tulip festival runs during the month of April, I’m sure those Tulip growers were breathing a sigh of relief when the first colors bloomed over the last few days.

The tulip festival holds a special place in my heart because we used to go every year and enjoy the acres of colorful flowers and we would take the same “tulip head picture” every year and wear matching outfits (because that is SUPER normal).

Yes, Keely is rocking a side braid and I'm wearing a scrunchie while also modeling our matching hot pink outfits.

Nice bangs Mom. I hope she was wearing a matching neon pink outfit too....

So, of course, the beauty of these spring flowers and trees were putting my winter-dormant yard to shame.

I couldn’t let the baby shower guests see the sad-sack garden that I literally ignored all winter, so I did what any shameless good gardener would do…

I went and bought flowers that were already in bloom, and planted them in my yard and passed them off as my own.

I’m a sneaky gardener, and white gardening lies never hurt anyone.

It was the easiest and best gardening I’ve ever done.

If I can ever get over this gardener’s guilt I have been feeling, I’d be tempted to do this exclusively from here on out.

Buy a basil plant, plant it in my yard and pretend I grew it.

Easy peasy.

There is nothing wrong with that… right?

Well then, as if I wasn’t feeling enough shame for my sham of a garden, my friend Ashley, who actually is an amazing gardener, sent me this out of the blue.

It’s like she knew I was a shameful gardener.

The garden gods must have told her that I was passing off Home Depot grown flowers as my own.  I think the garden gods are mad at me.  As penance, I think I have to grow everything from scratch now.

PS. When I think of the Garden gods, I imagine that it’s a group of garden gnomes gathered somewhere in the heavens, checking off their naughty and nice list.  I’m sure that our Husky garden gnome is one of them…

So now I have 500 pages to tackle on urban farming in Seattle and tons of seeds to plant.

No shortcuts in life I tell you.