At Least Mr. Personality Likes to Play With Them

So I have this planter in my patio.

When we first looked at this place, the previous owners had just redone the entire patio, including this planter. It is about six feet wide by about twenty feet long. It is made with the same concrete blocks as our patio walls, which I hate. I mean, why couldn't he have gone with brick or something? But no, identical ugly-ass beige concrete blocks everywhere you look.

This planter was filled with cacti. Yes, cacti. Now I am all in appreciation for the glorious diversity of flora in our world. But I can really do without my own personal cacti garden. When we were drawing up terms of the sale, the sellers insisted that they get to take some of the more "rare" cacti with them, as if they were going to have a fight on their hands. Instead, I told them to take all of them out, because I planned on redoing the entire thing.

I had grand dreams about this planter. When I closed my eyes, I saw lush beautiful green plants, interspersed with lovely, colorful flowers. I was going to make it so beautiful, you wouldn't even notice the planter itself. I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to get from Point A- Cacti and rock, to Point B- English garden paradise. But I was going to get there.

What I hadn't expected was to get pregnant only two months after we were married and be on bedrest. I hadn't expected that our income would be cut in half and I could barely afford plant food, much less tons of new plants. I also hadn't expected the dirt that they had put in there for the cacti. It was a reddish-clayish dirt, not dark and loamy as I picture good earth to be. Oh, and the rocks. They had put what must have been thousands of rocks in there. I don't know if they were just paranoid about weeds or if it again had something to do with the damn cacti.

For months, the planter sat. Lonely, bare, rocky, weedy. There was not much I could do about it at the time, and with every glance out my kitchen windows, it taunted me with its ugliness. I felt like I had my own quarry. Finally I was able to persuade Hubba-hubba to do something, anything with that planter. We wanted a bit of a privacy screen, so we bought some kind of tall shrubby things and a bouganvilla.

That was almost four years ago, and those five shrubs and the bouganvilla are all that reside in the planter, still.

Sometimes I can't help but think that planter is a metapor for my life at this point. It has been somewhat taken care of, but still shows many signs of neglect. Sometimes, the weeds are there for much too long. It practically cries out for someone to take time with it, spruce it up a little. A little TLC.

But then, perhaps it is a good thing, because the planter has yet to really take shape. It is still full of promise, and in a way, optimism. You can't ruin what isn't even there.

Or maybe I am just kidding myself and it is just fearful procrastination.

I aspire to be hydrangea and lavender, and perhaps some roses.

But right now, I have to settle for the rocks.