I Told You I Had a Plan

Do you remember the hillside? The brambly, weedy, nasty hillside that I shamefully coerced my husband into helping me rip up this spring? Then carefully planted with halfheartedly tossed random perennial divisions at, scattered with seed, and called it a day weekend?

Well, then it rained for six weeks, we got absorbed in our addition project, and went on vacation. "Neglect" would be a kind classification for the amount of care that hillside has gotten since that exhausting weekend in May.

However:

See? I totally knew what I was doing all along! Who knew?

I was pleasantly surprised to mow past it the other day and see it bursting with flowers. Like, the actual flowers that were pictured on the packets of wildflower seed mix I used. Huh.

Jenn's Expert Advice for Growing a Hillside of Wildflowers:

1. Spend 8 backbreaking hours on your knees grubbing absolutely everything out by the roots. Look around and notice that you're only 18% of the way done and that your fingernails appear to be gone.

2. Spend another 12 hours doing a slightly more half-hearted and cranky level of root-grubbing with a shovel and hoe. Remind yourself that at least no one is going to expect you to cook dinner again tonight.

3. Beg your husband sweetly (lose the profanity) to spread compost for you while you nurse a Diet Coke with Vanilla. Or seven.

4. Wake up refreshed the next morning. Just not quite refreshed enough to get on board with your original plan of carefully digging up and dividing all perennials to plant some on the Hillside of Hard Labor.

5. Stoically hack away portions of existing perennials (without digging them up) out of the gardens and stick them in random holes on the hillside.

6. "Allow" your nine-year-old and her friend to scatter the packs of wildflower seed over the hillside. Pretend like this is a major honor and you're really not sure you should trust them to do this. When they beg, acquiesce reluctantly. Try not to snicker as you walk away from them.

7. Arrange for Nature to deluge your hillside with rain for six weeks while you ignore it.

8. Ta-daaaaaa