Waxing Philosophical

What a lovely day.

It's beautiful outside, a very comfortable 78 degrees with a nice breeze, and I actually took the afternoon off to work in my garden. It is small (but growing) and now that there is no apparent danger of frost (although this is Ohio so you never can tell) I decided to plant my summer flowers. A couple of years ago, I thought I could end all my gardening woes and just sow the whole thing with wildflower seeds.

The poppies were pretty. The thistles were not, once they grew to eight feet tall with spiky leaves.

So, a bottle of Roundup later, I opted for old-fashioned flowers like sweet peas and roses. I thought, if nothing else, it would smell good and still be kind of pretty. The result? A sweet-smelling bed of thistles, which miraculously survived the Roundup.

This year, I hired someone to clear the thistles from my flowerbed.

So, this morning, armed with little pots of flowers and seeds and *gasp!* even some mulch, I descended into my garden for some relaxing excursions into horticulture. The result?

Ozzie and Harriet divebombed me.

After spraying said birds with the garden hose, I managed to toss a few wilted-looking seedlings into the dirt, prune my hopelessly tangled rosebushes back (I have some of the gathered blooms on my desk at the moment, and work to train my clematis and morning glories through their trellis.

Even I have a nice afternoon sometimes. It is distressing, however, that the high point of the whole day was not the well-ordered end result of my garden, but the fact that I blasted two murderous swallows from the sky with a stream of water.

I should be ashamed of myself.