After failing at gardening, I threw in my spade and hired a company to do it for me.
Once a week, workers wearing surgical masks would jump out of a fleet of trucks, brandishing power tools that were hideously loud and obnoxious. After cutting the grass, weeding and blowing pine needles and leaves off of my walkway and down the block in an evergreen tornado, they would hit the road before the dirt settled back into the cobblestones.
In an hour they accomplished what I would have in a month, albeit without the noise pollution.
Leaner times mean my return as the gardener in residence. Chief lawn cutter, the boss of my personal Eden. I informed the gardening brigade they need not stop at my house this season, then chased the spiders out of my gardening gloves and bought a push mower.
Bigger than a postage stamp yet smaller than our last yard, I figured I was up for the task. The key is to stay on top of it, my neighbour says, who could easily be mistaken for a lawn ornament, so constant is his presence in his yard.
On the West Coast, gardening means taming the jungle that will overtake your residence. Left unchecked, it will swallow my house and likely, its inhabitants, my three dirt-averse daughters, before I can utter the words, "Deadhead the rhododendrons or you're not getting your allowance."
Not that I'm averse to gardening, it's the duration of the season that stymies me - my affinity for it dies with the lilac blooms. I typically launch a ground attack in April, with energetic and renewed enthusiasm for my green thumb. While hoeing, I map out a strategy to ambush a quarter of the territory each weekend. I plant flowers in pots and for diplomacy conduct garden tours for friends and neighbours. We discuss perennials and annuals like I know the difference. I continually utter, "the latin name escapes me."
I pull out the pillows for the patio furniture, and venture to Ikea to stock up on tea lights, lanterns, and blankets for all the nights we will dine alfresco, evenings spent under the stars and solar powered lights I've strung up like fireflies around my yard.
But come May, the trench warfare grows old as the monotony of weeding and pruning mounts. The beach or perhaps cleaning the oven seems like a better idea, and will be easier on my nail beds if not my flowers. Moss infiltrates the lawn and I turn a blind eye - it's green, after all - and the dandelions I zealously uprooted in April now, I decide, add a pop of colour. As my enthusiasm for my garden wanes, the edges of the lawn become softer, the bushes I'd pruned fuller, so by the end of July my manicured Japanese garden morphs into a looser Britishstyled space, where weeds take their place amongst the maples and hydrangea bushes.
I spend a few mornings drinking coffee on my patio sofas (when they're not water-logged), but soon the detritus that falls from the trees seems like too much effort to dust off, the tea lights collect rain water, and most nights are a few degrees too cold to eat outside. Visions of garden parties give way to picnics at the beach.
By autumn, it's obvious who's won this turf war (turf - now there's a thought). I try to avoid the Amazonian-proportioned ferns and rhododendrons that are encroaching on our walkway, and offer scythes to visitors to aid their coming and going.
While in winter hibernation, I read self-help books about seeing things through, before hitting the ground next spring for another round. It's as predictable as the seasons.
