the old garden center

for family time this morning, we all piled into the black car and drove to my old garden center to talk to the owners about helping deliver some plants. (long story- see * to read it). then i went out to the garden part and i was admiring all the plants when i ran into Josh who i had hired so many years ago. apparently he was just back for the summer to help out, as he was taking engineering in school. it was wild seeing him, just because he was all grown up. this little kid who was 17 was all grown up at 24, and he was kinda hunky. adorable guy. so he flirted with me which made me feel very young again (like 33 is old)and it was nice. anyways, i kept looking around at all the plants and i noticed that the perennials weren't in alphabetical order by latin name, the shrubs weren't labelled properly...it made me itch. twitch. fitch. i wanted to throw on some gloves and do some work. i miss it. i miss the lugging around of heavy pots and pruning of dead branches so they look more presentable. the weeding of perennials and watering and fertilizing. it's almost like i had to find a home for each and every individual plant, or i wasn't doing my job. it made me wonder if i should go back part-time. but it would not be good for me i don't think, as it would be less family-time, less time in my own garden...and the icky politics would be back and that would be awful. so i'll just have a little day dream today about how wonderful it once was, and then let it all go.

i'd love to own a little garden center one day. but i also want a book shop too. could i be the first bookshoppe/garden center? books would probably get dirty. what would i call it? green backs. green for the plants and backs for books. sigh.

*When i was in charge of the garden center, i did all the ordering of plants. a gentleman came in one day with a car full of plants. i checked it out and his stuff is gorgeous, and he was a local. so i decided to order stuff off of him every year and thankfully, when i left, they kept ordering from him. we drove by to see how he was doing at his greenhouse last week, and it turns out he has bone cancer in his leg and his left side is without feeling. so we offered to help him do his deliveries in exchange for a hanging basket.