Gardening Woes

I ask you, do these lovely daisies look like weeds? Perhaps they appeared to be in the strict definition of the word 'weed', a plant growing in a place where it is not wanted, in that they were carpeting my front flower garden in a bit of a haphazard fashion, with a few empty patches here and there. They had re-seeded themselves from last year's annual flower. Unfortunately, due to the sporadic nature in which their seed was distributed, and thus growing, our gardener (no we aren't of the upper class; I am odd enough in that I work in my flower garden, but tilling the soil and spraying the trees would be completely unacceptable work for us to do ourselves.) determined these lovely African daisies were weeds, and hoed up the whole lot of them. Glad I had taken a picture first! Not only are they gone, they hadn't matured enough to disperse their seeds for next years bloom.

I am a little embarrassed to admit I had what amounts to a temper tantrum when my husband broke the news to me. I huffed and puffed, and I think I may have stomped my feet a few times. This lasted about three minutes and I recall hearing the kids chuckle as they observed my outburst. Then I settled into my coping-with-life-in-Jordan mindset of 'hayk il' haya', 'such is life', or 'illi fat, mat', 'what's done is done.' On with the day.

Another woeful tale: Pictured above is the last of my beloved foxgloves, and it met its demise last summer. I'm missing it this spring. Once upon at time I, amazingly, found six potted foxglove plants, foliage only, at a roadside garden stand. I had never seen a foxglove in Jordan before and I've never seen one since. I purchased all six and was thrilled when they bloomed the following spring. Five were planted in one spot but one, pictured above, found its way to another corner of the yard. When we returned to Jordan from the States at the end of the summer I found that the group of five foxgloves had disappeared. Not died, but completely disappeared. I'd never had anyone steal plants before! The following spring my lone foxglove bloomed like never before, almost as if it were making up for the others being stolen, sending up three beautiful stalks. That summer, our landlord hired painters to paint the stairwell. Can you guess where they dumped the paint thinner?

This beauty of a Ranunculus was blooming in my garden last week, the first to burst open this spring. Unfortunately an unidentified neighbor has decided they have a penchant for beautiful Ranunculus flowers; it was picked just hours after I took this picture. Three more yellow blooms were picked when they opened a couple of days later and the first white bloom, gone its first day in full bloom.

So, I'm feeling bit mopey about my flowers and, overall, unmotivated to plant this spring. I think I'll just enjoy what is already planted and growing as it will soon be to hot to do any planting anyway. Sigh.