Brett Buckner: Only a pick-up will make this garden grow
I fear the sod may have been the final straw. 'Course if that didn't do it, the four busted bags of wet composted manure left in the trunk over an especially warm weekend are sure to. The car my wife once loved — now in the hands of a grubby gardener — smells like a backwoods bait-and-tackle shop. There are some odors that not even a king's ransom worth of 75-cent Quickie Mart vacuum jobs and a jug of pina colada-scented air freshener can erase. Composted cow flops and fruity drinks … Yummy! Plus, now I've got that god-awful song stuck in my head ("If you like pina coladas/and getting caught in the rain.") My stinky situation stemmed from the insanely high price of gasoline. Once upon a time, I was driving the family SUV. After my old car was sent to automotive heaven thanks to a dropped tube of Chapstick and a sneaky ditch, My Lovely Wife and I went down to the Kia dealership and cruised away in a lumbering behemoth. Trouble was … the commute. With the price of gas rising faster than Dorothy in a hot air balloon, I couldn't afford the drive without having to sell plasma along the way. So we traded. She got Godzilla and I got a sweet little Civic, which would've been fine if driving were its sole purpose. But I am a gardener. Gardeners don't drive cars. Gardeners gotta have trucks, else they abuse their cars by treating 'em like trucks. Though neat by nature (You down with OCD … Yeah you know me!), being a gardener puts me at odds with keeping a clean vehicle. But rather than cleaning up after my dang self, I blame the car. It's too small. There's no room for my booty (by which I mean plants) and that musty smell of dirt and frustration simply won't go away. The trunk — at max — can't hold more than three bales of pine straw. Then there's no room for mulch, except for on the backseat. But in order to keep that from turning into one big muddy stain, I've gotta go back to the cashier and with a stupid grin ask for some plastic bags to cover the seats. I've sacrificed my dignity and manhood on the altar of gas mileage and lower emissions. By my estimations, which require a geometrical plant-to-cargo-space scale that would've made Pythagoras proud, I can't fit more than five three-gallon azaleas, four one-gallon tea olives, four flats of various mounding perennials and three bags of garden soil in this wee vehicle without driving home blinded by all the foliage. Besides, petunias don't ride shotgun. They're meant to waddle and wave in the breeze from the back of pick-up. That's my dream. I I just want a truck, something that'll allow me to buy all my heart desires without worrying about snapping branches and spilling dirt. On second thought, maybe there's something to be said for limited space. |
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