I didn’t plant flowers this year. Usually, about May I start to get all anxious about flowers.  The vain part of me wants to look like everyone else’s house, and so I head out and try and ‘start over’ with a garden, buy flowers and dirt and plant a bunch of things I don’t have the care or understanding to look after.  I’ll plant some vegetables, I’ll spend money we don’t need to on baskets and potting soil and just like every year before it, I’ll put all this half-assed effort into making it work. Part of the problem with my ill-advised and always mostly wasted money is that I never buy perennials. A little bit because I don’t figure I’ll get to enjoy them all that much after we move.  Selfishly I think “I won’t be here to see them year after year so why should I plant them?” Mostly though, it’s because I lack basic faith in the plant growing process. I am completely unconvinced that the plant that I plant, with my terrible gardening skills, the one that dies and disappears in the fall, will come back in the spring.  I have a hard time believing that what I plant will return year after year, especially when the winters are harsh and the ice is thick and I don’t see the flowers for months and month. So I buy annuals every year.  And most die before their time because I have a black thumb that is only reflecting the rest of me that deep down knows it doesn’t like gardening, it just thinks it should…