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big, slimy, fast-moving, bugs come out from under places when they're least expected was not a pleasant learning experience; and neither was learning that wearing sandals out to work in a garden ruins a pedicure. I've learned how if you don't wear a hat your scalp gets sunburned but, more importantly, that green worms fall out of trees and get in your hair.

I'm particularly proud of the two-year-old impatiens I brought in one Fall and managed to keep alive over my kitchen sink. Ah - my clean and cheerful and bug-free kitchen where my impatiens success story and hearty philodendron create the illusion that I have a green thumb. Ah - my clean, cheerful, bug-free, kitchen where my fingernails only get cleaner and where no green worms fall into my head and where the impatiens and philodendron allow me the dillusion that I am competent with plants. My kitchen - with some leaves on the wallpaper - is probably the closest thing to a garden I'll have really have.

That, and the fact that I buy ready-bloomed petunias and geraniums and go out and pick heads off each evening, allow this non-gardener to have something just a little in common with real gardeners. What my so-called gardens have taught me the hard way is that I REALLY don't like dirt and REALLY don't like bugs and REALLY don't know much, or want to know much, about gardening at all.

There's nobody who appreciates the breathtaking, awesome, beauty of flowers and plants the way I do; but it turns out that's not enough to a gardener make.

Learn more about this author, Lisa H Warren.
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