The Yellow Weeds

The yellow weeds aren’t weeds.  They are marigolds.  Marigolds look like dandelions sometimes.  Maybe.  Or maybe not.  Don and my favorite father-in-law think so however.  Especially when they are trimming the yard.  I guess the wood box the marigolds were in was not a clear enough indication that they were marigolds.  I guess the other flowers in the wood box were not an indication either.

Now, my father-in-law claims to not remember this happening.  I asked him about it a few months ago.

I think he is suffering from selective amnesia.

Or perhaps he is worried I will make him plant flowers this spring.

I was never a gardener per se.  I had helped with my grandpa’s garden and helped Mom (aka Nana) plant annuals each year in the front beds.  But, it wasn’t something I was too interested in.

Until we got our first house.

I decided I was going to put in this beautiful flower bed made of wood and it was going to be chock full of flowers like the photos on House Beautiful.

Dad came over and helped me build two flower beds in front of our house out of wood. (Okay I stood there, watched and probably complained about how hot it was outside).  We filled it with dirt and I began dreaming of my beautiful gardens.

Funny thing about that.

Flowers don’t automatically grow overnight and look like those pictures in magazines.

I ended up choosing a few perennials – after a careful, in-depth study of our frost dates and planting regions.

In the one bed, right under the window, I planted marigolds.

Similar to the yellow one in the picture above.

Do you think it looks like a marigold?  Me either.

I carefully tended my flowers and still held out hopes that overnight the entire front yard would burst into bloom and be spectacular.

Later that summer, my father-in-law was over and Don and him were doing yard work.  Mowing.  Trimming.  Weed-eating.

They came around the corner of the house.  Saw the yellow marigolds…

And. Whacked. Them. Down.

They claim they thought they were dandelions.

That isn’t even the best part.

The best part is when they took the flowers and poked the stems back into the grown to look like they were still growing and alive.

They never said a word to me.

A few days later, I was trying to figure out why my marigolds were dying… and noticed the stems weren’t attached to the roots.

They decided to come clean and confess.  They said it was because they didn’t want to upset me.

I don’t know what was funnier… that they “replanted” them or didn’t realize they were marigolds.

I’ve never planted marigolds again.

Picture by Liz West (https://www.flicker.com/photos/calliope/) and is used under Creative Commons License CC by 2.0. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode). No changes made.

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