...and then you have a garden.

I always thought gardening was this bucolic, back to nature thing that I would do, and little bluebirds would alight in my hair as my tulips sprung from the ground in an array of Monet-like watercolors.

It did not turn out that way at all.

Once upon a time, we bought this wee little house. It had wee little gardens. I planted stuff. It grew. Sort of. I didn't do a great job. Because here's the thing that they don't tell you- you have to work at it all the fucking time.

The really pretty flowers, the ones that look like, you know, flowers, only last for one year. Those are your annuals. You have to plant new ones every year. Every year.

This is NOT my house.

The method I employ is the I-don't-want-to-spend-a-thousand-dollars-every-spring-on-flowers method. Also known as the "Is this a perennial?" method.

These are hostas. I don't love them, but they are perennials, they are large, and they take up space.

After the wee house, we moved to South Carolina. We lived in an apartment, no gardening, life was good. But we had the itch of the American dream, and bought a house. Gardening ensued. I tried to grow some zucchini, but it didn't work out. I grew a wisteria in a ridiculously successful way and it smelled amazing. I wanted to put rock down as my sort of mulch, but as it turns out, rocks hold heat, and that bakes your plants. So I bought some plants that were good in the desert, and those worked out for me. I asked a lot of questions at a lot of places that sold plants.

Then we moved to Virginia, and rented a house. It was a new house, it was a rental, there was no landscaping to keep up. Laziness ruled the day.

Then we bought our current house, the money pit with an amazing view. Seriously, it's an amazing view. Anyway, the money pit has a yard to end all yards. It's a damn big yard. Luckily, I do not mow. That is Agent N's job as of last year. He gets paid when he does it.

There is so much landscaping. Some is in the sun. Some is part sun. Some is shady. If you are new to the gardening game, you should know that different plants grow in different amounts of sun. Some grow in shade. Some need a lot of sun. Some like both.

Then there's the vegetable garden. I like zucchini and yellow squash. Also basil. Year one- I thought I'd grow some. I grew some, I was moderately successful. My garden was kind of full of weeds, though. I'm not much for weeding. The landscaping looked like shit. I didn't even know what I was doing, and I didn't know what was there before, so I let stuff grow to figure out if it was good. We put down so much mulch. Mulch is heavy. It's supposed to cut back on the weeds, but be warned, it does not do the whole job. You will still have to pull weeds.

I use this to weed- it helps you get the roots out.

I spent a large portion of the fall cutting back bushes that ran away with themselves, and digging out an enormous amount of some sort of plant that grew taller than me. That's not a joke.

Year two, the plant that was taller than me came back, but there was slightly less of it. We put down more mulch. We rented a tiller for the garden. I grew a ton of zucchini, squash, some beans, and a few tomatoes. I tried to grow spinach, but it never grew. Not even a little bit. I successfully split some hostas. I planted some groundcover that didn't do so well. I was kind of pissed. I had put it a shit ton (technical term) of work that did not pay off. Because motherfucking gardening never ends. I still spend the fall cutting back bushes, but at least this time I knew it was going to happen.

I had this vision of sitting back on the deck with a sweet tea and admiring my work. NOPE.

Year three (present day):  This year, I bought a hand tiller for $30 compared to last year's $70 rental. How hard could it be? 2 hours of tilling the garden by hand and I was sweating more than when I work out. But it's already paid for itself because it's cheaper, I guess. I planted spinach this year because it's a superfood and I eat it every day. It's actually growing. The groundcover I planted last year is already growing, despite the winter of doom. The hostas need to be split again. The bushes already need to be cut back. I may or may not have killed the holly bush by cutting it too far back, but those leaves hurt like a son of a bitch so go ahead and die, asshole bush. I dug out the ugly rosebush in front of the house. The hydrangea I planted last year is coming back in a big way. The weeds bigger than me are slightly less this year. I'm pretty sure I won't get rid of them completely without a flamethrower.

All that, done. It's not even June.

The stupid garden, it's growing on me (see what I did there?).

The ants have arrived.

Sports Guy and I bought a house back in November. It's a lovely house with an even more lovely view.

Yes, it's instagrammed. I like it.

In the pic you can't even see the mountains off to the right. But they're there. You can see the cows, though. They're not ours. But we do have cows for neighbors.

The location of this house would have qualified us for a rural loan from the US Dept. of Agriculture, but we make too much (in what universe?) so we went through the regular business.

We had the usual new-to-us problems. The wallpaper was ugly...

This was the paper in Agent N's room. Not quite appropriate for a 9 year old boy.

And then when we took it down, it turned out that they had glued it directly to the drywall, causing us to actually rip out chunks of drywall.

Screw you, wallpaper!

But, we survived. Winter came & went, and it was fairly mild, all was right with the world. Spring arrives, we retrieve the screens from the shed and attempt to wash them. Sports Guy turned on the only outdoor spigot (only one, really) and a little water comes out, but not a lot. Agent N comes screaming into the garage, "Mom! There's water running in the basement!" ... the pipes had cracked (no, we did not leave a hose hooked up, thanks, it cracked because it hates us)  and the water was leaking into the basement. The finished basement. The basement with ceilings like the ones upstairs. So when the plumber came, he had to cut a hole in the ceiling. Luckily, it's a small hole, and I don't give a damn, so it's still there.

As the weather has warmed up, the animals have awakened. The cows had babies and they're SO CUTE. I have no pictures of baby cows. Sorry.

And the ants have woken up. OHOLYCRAP the ants have woken up. So have the flies and the gnats. I now present to you the stages of life with insects:

1. Oh, hey, there's some bugs. I'm gonna put out some traps.
2. OH HELL NO YOU DON'T. Ant poison procured. Solutions researched on the internet & implemented. 
3. Inform Sports Guy that he needs to find an exterminator because I have done all the insect elimination myself & he could pick up a phone for me. Exterminator chides me for leaves next to house foundation. I'm pretty sure that's not the only source of ants, but I clear them away anyway. 
4. ... false sense of security... it appears the ants are gone...
5. WHAT THE F!!!???!!! Ants continue the Bataan Death March, I continue to exterminate on own, while paying exterminator. I start killing ants with bare fingers because I just don't care anymore.
6. Ants declare victory, throw party on deck even though I haven't had a chance to throw party there myself. I die from ant poisoning.

Troll Ant mocks me