Garden Resolutions for 2014

By John Markowski @jmarkowski0

Resolutions are useless.
We get a temporary jolt that "this will be the year", but we all know, shit ain't going to happen.     
Exhibit A - take a look at my garden resolutions from last year:
Soil test - fail
Compost - fail
Education - fail
  
I couldn't have made my resolutions any more attainable and yet I still went 0 for 3.
Dope.
So for this year, we are going to shake it up a bit. A little reverse psychology if you will.
Here we go: 
Growing your own food really is a waste of time. I would much rather just buy our produce from a big old supermarket and pay more for it. So let's make a promise to grow less fruits and vegetables this year:

I love having to move large shrubs once they outgrow their location. The pain of digging it out and trying not to destroy all of the plants in its path once it is unearthed is the frickin best. I vow to ignore proper spacing rules in 2014:
     

I love taking my chances on a plant that deer love to chow down on. Those plants that are not deer friendly, like Allium, are so boring:
    


I find berries on shrubs/trees to be such a distraction and an unnecessary mess. Plus all those annoying birds come and devour them. No more plants with berries in 2014:


One of my favorite moments in summer is when we go on vacation and I fail to line someone up to help water the containers. I love the mystery of returning home to see if any of the flowers or even the plants survived. Pure adrenaline. I am going to do more of the same in 2014 and even try to plan our vacation for the hottest and driest part of summer:     

The wear and tear, cost and effort of cutting the grass is so worth it. It is so rewarding to spend most of my free time sitting on a lawn tractor. So let's remove more of those garden beds and add more lawn:

Native plants are so uninteresting and do not add a lot to the garden. In 2014 we eradicate them all and add more yuccas and hostas: 


Ignore what my daughter has to say and do my best to fail to live up to her expectations:

Remove all blue foliage plants from my garden:

Keep ignoring my conditions and try to fit a square peg in a round hole. I refuse to attempt to grow a bog garden:

Happy New Year my friends and let's ignore our resolutions in 2014.
John