My Garden... My Nemesis

Some people are born with green thumbs. They have gardens that thrive and bloom and are a joy to behold. My mother is one of the green thumbs. She's a miracle worker with plants. This genetic marker, however, did not get passed on to me. I have a black thumb. Not literally, of course. But I am horrible with plants. I can kill them just by looking at them. I can do everything right (water, fertilize, etc), but somehow my plants will still die. I think they can sense my ineptitude. They know they're dealing with an amateur, and they torment me accordingly. More often than not, my plants wilt away into the abyss of nothingness. In order for a plant to survive on my property, it has to be VERY rugged and durable. In short, it has to be nearly indestructible.

So, imagine my surprise when, almost a year later, my front garden is still doing very well. I have 5 rose bushes that bloom almost every day. My hibiscus bushes are coming back nicely after being beaten down by some winter frost. Of course, it doesn't hurt that we've had a lot of rainfall in the last month. It also doesn't hurt that we've had more cloud cover than normal, so the plants don't get baked in the sun nearly as much as they would ordinarily. I should have known better than to get my hopes up, though. Yesterday, I was congratulating myself on a job well done, and enjoying my roses. Today, I am vigorously cursing mother nature.

I have been invaded by caterpillars. They seem to really be enjoying my rose bushes -- a little too much, in fact. I started spraying my plants with bug spray, but I'm finding out this was a bad idea. You see, we have a lot of birds on our property. Birds, it turns out, LOVE catepillars. So when the bird eats a catepillar that has been poisoned by my spray... well, lets just say the result is not pretty. So I am back to square one. How do I get rid of the catepillars without harming the birds? After a couple of weeks, I may not have to worry about it, as my roses will be nibbled down to little stubs. Apparently my black thumb has reared it's ugly in-grown nail once again.

Maybe I should just stick to cactus plants.