My yard really wants to be a beautiful garden. It’s not like I’m trying and it’s fighting me every step of the way, like the yard at our previous house did. No, this yard is begging to be gardened. If I gave it just ten minutes a day it would probably look like the cover of the Burpee catalog.

We bought our house in 2000 from an old lady who had been there 60 years and was finally moving to assisted living. She was a master gardener. She planted flowers everywhere. The backyard bed was deep enough that you couldn’t reach the flowers in the back row without stepping into it. She knew what she was doing, too. Even after five summers of neglect the soil is incredibly well-aerated, rich, and crammed full of earthworms. It’s gorgeous. And it’s calling out, “Hey, Bookworm! Put down your book! Tend me! Plant some flowers! Look what I can do!”

This rose bush is positively embarrassing. It has so many blooms on it that it’s drooping to the ground. It’s in the front yard close to the sidewalk and sometimes people walking by will stop and ask me about my rose-growing technique. Oh ha ha! I just tell them to buy a house whose previous owner, yadda yadda.

The clematis is embarrassing too. I’m told these are difficult to grow because the roots have to be in the shade but the blooms have to be in the sun or something. All I know is this thing gets in the way of our mailbox so occasionally I take a whack at it. Other than that, zip, nada, zilch.

I believe this is astilbe. I didn’t plant it. I don’t water it. I don’t weed around it. I don’t do nuthin, and still it blooms like crazy.

God, the peonies are the most embarrassing of all. I actually tried to “divide” these a couple of years ago. I read up on it and learned that peonies do not like to be disturbed. But I went ahead anyway with this half-assed idea of thinning them, did this horrible chop job, and yes they were a little scrawny for a couple of seasons. But look at them now!

I don’t know if you can tell from the picture, but this hollyhock is actually growing out of a crack in the asphalt. Behind it, bursting out of their bed, are daylilies. Actually, daylilies grow like weeds everywhere around here. I understand that they are sometimes called Michigan Lilies.

What I didn’t photograph: the dandelions, thistles, and crabgrass that grow with equal enthusiasm. (Parenting tip: do not offer to pay your son a quarter per thistle pulled when the soil is still wet from yesterday’s rain unless you wish to pay him $23.50 for ten minutes of very easy labor.)

My mother-in-law — and you should see her glorious garden! — tells a story of the time when she discovered my then-2yo husband whipping the heads off her daffodils with a belt. Coming at the end of what I imagine had been a hard day (Steve was the youngest of three), she broke down and wept when she saw the carnage.

On the other hand, when Daniel and I are outside and he asks for permission to behead the peonies with a little pair of pliers — yes, he asks for permission — “Sure, honey,” I say. “Go right ahead!”