A good rule of your green thumb is Plan, Prepare, Purchase, Plant. If you try to prepare and plant at the same time, you’ll poop out and then those plants that you’ve taken into your care face possible death. Of course it’s not premeditated, but the plants will be just as dead.

 Death by good intention

Have you ever seen a honey bee that’s got so much pollen on her feet and thighs that she can barely fly? I often wonder if some of them never make it back to their hives they’re so overloaded. 

This year I’ve turned one of my pet peeves into an advantage. We have a big meadow and every spring the moles convene like they're at a mole convention. Their underground social network seems to put them in our meadow about when the grass starts growing. As I walked through the grass and inspected the hills I noticed how rich the dirt was and I thought, ‘I should use it for potting soil when planting flowers in the beds that have a great deal of clay.’ It really does work! Ask your local nurseryman what you might mix with your mole dirt to make it even better, in your area.

With spring in the air we SHEs are like busy bees around the nurseries where the flowers beg us to take them home like puppies at the Humane Society.

Have you ever seen a honey bee that’s got so much pollen on her thighs that she can barely fly? I often wonder if some of them never make it back to their hives they're so loaded down. Like those bees, we can get carried away buying more than we can plant. We fly home with our trunks full of flats of annuals and the optimism we’’ll plant them all in a day. Often we poop out in the middle of the plant and the remaining purchase is at the mercy of our next planting mood.

A good rule of thumb is the four Ps. Plan, Prepare, Purchase, Plant. If you try to prepare and plant at the same time, you’ll poop out and then those plants that you have taken into your care face possible death. Of course it’s not premeditated, but the plants will be just as dead.