An Urge to Garden

After 46 years, I’ve come to the conclusion that the ‘gardener’ gene did not get passed down from my parents to me.  My Dad grew amazing vegetable and flower gardens every summer during my youth and my Mom always has a bunch of thriving houseplants growing in her home. But me?  The family joke is that I might be the only individual alive that has successfully killed an air fern, which is an oxymoron, since an air fern is actually dead, dried and dyed colonies of marine hydroids. But somehow I managed to turn my air fern from vibrant green to crumbly brown.
Still, that doesn’t stop me from getting the urge to get my hands dirty and plant something living and colorful every spring.  Is it something in the air?  Do the warm breezes whisper ‘plant pansies’ in my ear?  It sure seems so.
The past couple of weekends I’ve had to resist the urge to run to Lowe’s and buy pretty flowering things and bring them home.  It’s almost like the weather itself just insists that we all get outside, dig in the dirt and plant. Except nature seems to forget that those poor, pretty plants will be doomed if I bring them home. Oh, they’ll seem to flourish for a few weeks…giving them a false sense of security…and then the true nature of their future is usually revealed.
My recent urge to garden has me wondering if I’m the only one?  Does spring do the same thing to you? And am I the only person out here with a decidedly brown thumb?
Talk to me either in the comments below or by leaving your own gardening story in our Boomer Voices section.