I'd stand under the hot Georgia sun, holding a water hose on my daddy's new tomato plants, and watch the other kids play ball across the street. I'd pull sweet potato slips for ten cents a hundred and thank my lucky stars I was getting paid at all. I'd have to wash the dishes and take my turn mowing the grass, but my brothers never had to do the dishes. Life wasn't fair and I swore if I ever grew up, I'd never do yard work again.

After I got married, I'd call home before a visit to make sure the corn wasn't coming in because I knew I'd get stuck helping, grown-up married woman or not. My mother gave me a lovely hanging basket and asked me to give it back to her when it started to die. I once killed a cactus.

And they wanted me to write a gardening column!

Well, I wrote that column for a spell and I'm posting some of them on this page, along with pictures of my gardens. The good pictures, you know.

I waited thirty years to go back outside and even then, it wasn't my fault. Every time I pulled in the driveway, I'd see this irritating clump of weeds near the garage and one day I went out to pull that hunk of grass up. Two hours later, the entire bank was weeded. The next day I told a co-worker about it and she handed me a Park Seed catalogue.

I was doomed.

I thought maybe I'd order a few seed to toss out on that bank. My first seed order was $367.57. No, I didn't mail it, but it took a while to cut it down because the pictures were so pretty and the catalogue told me they were all EASY.

That was my first gardening joke -- easy plants -- and it's been downhill ever since.

Luckily, I jumped on the internet about that time and found GardenWeb and immediately started making friends and stealing great ideas from these real gardeners. The adventures I've had and the mistakes I've made -- well, they were my own. There were only twelve forums at GardenWeb back then and about fifty regular posters. We became friends and have visited each other across the United States on our various travels. Most of my early plants were gifts from these friends and anything I know about plants, I learned from them.

So join me here, sit a spell and have some iced tea. You may not learn much about gardening, but I'll try not to bore you.