Flowering ambition wilts in information overload
by Beth Teitell

Thursday, April 26, 2001

This sounds like an excuse you'd hear from the jerk who repeatedly pretends he's never met you, but it's true. Some people suffer from a neurological condition that makes it difficult or impossible for them to recognize faces.

Faces I have no problem with - I can call an eye lift in the dark - but plants and flowers are another story.

Phlox? Hydrangea? Lobelia? Yikes. And people complain the tax law is confusing. I'd fill out a 1040 any day, just don't ask me to pick a hollyhock out of a lineup.

Awhile ago, someone asked me - in front of my mother-in-law - what kind of flowers I carried in my wedding bouquet. Panicked, my brain shut down, and I heard myself saying the only name I could access.

``Orchids,'' I answered, as my internal voice (which is, unfortunately, smarter than my external one) screamed ``Orchids? What are you crazy? You were holding miniature roses and lilies. You chose them yourself.''

My mother-in-law is too nice to say anything, but it was a wake-up call. Like Scarlett O'Hara right before intermission in ``Gone With the Wind,'' I scooped up some earth in my hands and vowed I'd never go hungry again. Then, realizing that that wouldn't help my petunia problem, and that I never do go hungry anyway, I vowed that I'd never be humiliated by floral deficit disorder again.

In fact, I'd go the other way. I'd become a fanatic, a person known for her way with growing things. My garden would be featured in The Garden Conservancy's ``Open Days Directory,'' a guide to America's best private gardens. I'd join the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, and teach a class on plant identification, and spend hours in the society's library, losing myself in books on early agriculture and landscape design. I'd disparage neat rows of geraniums as ``mall plantings,'' and look down on rubber plants. ``So '60s,'' I'd sniff.

``Tomorrow is another day,'' I said as I headed to the bookstore to buy hundreds of dollars worth of gardening books, the better to enjoy my new hobby.

Later, at home, ordering Smith & Hawken garden clogs and a teak Giverny bench (adapted from the original that graced Claude Monet's gardens), I told my husband about my dreams.

``Our deck is going to look like Tuscany,'' I said.

The reading and ordering went on for weeks, until I realized, with some dread, that the time to start actually gardening had come.

I want to garden. I do. But they make it so hard. I was reading one of my new books, ``Year-round Containers, Baskets and Boxes,'' getting all psyched about the wicker log baskets that I'd fill with lavender and lady's mantle and Canterbury bells, and the brick wall that I'd use as a backdrop for a collection of cottage-garden favorites, like sunflowers and pansies, when all of a sudden the authors started talking about soil and compost and lots of other very technical things.

``Wrap plant roots in a small cone of polyethylene to prevent damage,'' one typical sentence read. Or, ``Regular deadheading is essential to keep up the show.'' Or, ``Add water-retaining granules and slow-release fertilizer.''

Roots? Deadheading? Fertilizer?

I thought gardening was supposed to be fun.

``You know,'' I told my husband when he talked about how nice our new window boxes were going to look, ``they're doing really amazing things with silk flowers these days.''