I tried to buy a bush yesterday, but it didn’t go well. I thought I was taking the correct approach:

• Determine the size of the space available in front of my house:
  • six feet wide, between the two evergreen boxwood bushes that have grown five and six feet high.
• Determine what I want to see in that space:
  • Something with color, something that will pop, red, orange, or yellow would be ideal. The boxwoods are just green, beautiful, but very green. 
• Something that will grow in the sandy soil of my house:
  • Buy compost, mulch, and soil, to help the plant take root and survive.
  •  

This should all be easy, but it wasn’t.

I went to an actual garden center in town, one with a good reputation as I learned that big home improvement stores and grocery stores do not have the same quality. Well, the garden center was huge.  I am not an experienced gardener who so far has only learned to pull out weeds. 

I did trim the big boxwoods the other day, but after an hour, I was spent. My neighbor finished trimming the bushes for me, and also “fixed” my non-artistic work where I made the boxwoods look like, well, square boxes. He rounded them off beautifully and tackled that six-footer that I knew would kill me physically if I attempted it after trimming four other bushes.

My gardening experience gets worse. A decade ago, I had decided to plant the border between my land and my neighbor’s land with what I thought were similar boxwood bushes. I bought 10 of them and expected them to grow wide 5 feet wide and 6 feet tall at the most. They were a foot and a half when I purchased them. Instead of growing like the ones in the front yard, they grew to 12 feet high and narrow –  all 10 of them. I have a backyard full of bushy Christmas trees.  They’re pretty, but they’re weird.

As I walked into the garden center, I wanted to make better choices. Plants outside, plants in two greenhouses, plants in two outdoor areas, so many plants! How does one choose? How do you know when it’s right? Is it like a relationship? You just know? Or is it like a one-night stand, enjoy it while it lasts and move on? Don’t overthink it?

I tried to focus on the first line of plants outdoors in front of the store. The mums sparkled in the sunlight, full of yellows and reds in vibrant colors, and they looked like small bushes — but aren’t mums flowers? Despite having an iPhone and the free version of ChatGPT, it didn’t occur to me to look it up.  I settled on mums being flowers, and so I couldn’t buy that because, well, I wanted to buy a bush. 

FYI: I just looked up “mums” and they can be grown as “bushy” plants when pruned or “pinched back” in the growing season. I have no idea how you “prune” or “pinch back” a mum plant. I don’t even know when their growing season is.

I walked through the store to the back, which is also outside and where the legit “bushes” were planted in big pots. Damn, they looked heavy. I picked one up, and the weight wasn’t so bad, but these plants were much bigger than mums.  What a deep hole I’d need to dig, and frankly, I didn’t love the plant all that much. It was colorful, but not like those mums.

The more colorful bushes all had bees buzzing about them, pollinating. I know that environmentally, that’s a good thing, but I once upset a hornet’s nest as big as a football in one of the boxwood bushes.  The hornets were pissed and literally chased me into the house. They managed to sting me at least six times. I sat in the living room sore and aching from the bites, while those monsters banged themselves against the house and windows.

I realize that bumble bees are not aggressive bastards like hornets, but still, I’m not sure I want a bunch of bees buzzing right near the front windows of the house.  Maybe when I plant further away from the house.

I walked through that garden center several times and wondered what the hell I should buy, what could I handle, and what would be the right choice, not a stupid choice? In the end, I bought absolutely nothing, drove out of the garden center like a dog running away with its tail between its legs, went home exhausted from the angst of it all, took a nap. I woke up later and pulled some weeds in my bare garden.

But you know, I think I might buy those bushy mums and call it a day…