Doom of Plants

First thing I did this morning was this:

What?  I'm just a little guy!

The next thing I did was visit a plant nursery with half a mind to look at holly bushes.  They didn't have any.  But I did wander through the rows of flowering plants with envy.  See, I can't keep plants alive.  Not many of them, anyway.  I can't even keep cacti alive, and I love cacti.  Back during the few years I lived in CA, I lived a block away from a cactus nursery featuring amazing succulents of all kinds flourishing in profusion.  But it was hopeless.  I couldn't even keep a cactus alive in the desert.

Compounding the problem is my yard, which apparently resents having holes dug into it to the point of killing anything I attempt to plant.  Oh it's not unfriendly to everything, sure... oak trees like it here, azalea bushes do fine, there's some wild jasmine, a rose bush I planted last year is alive, and I have a splendid Japanese maple that is almost exactly old as me.  And the yard is green, I can't fault it there -- there's a little grass and plenty of weedy things that, when mown short, give it the illusion of having a lawn.  But just about anything I try to plant in it... is doomed.

Part of the problem is the shade what with all the oak trees around.  There aren't many spots that get a good full sun.  But shady plants haven't done well, either.  I tried fancy moss.  It didn't take in the sun or the shade.  Regrettable.  I like moss.  The bigger problem is the soil, this hard dirt clay stuff that stunts growth.  Few bulbs flower, things grow slowly.  I'm sure its chemically all wrong.  But even a deep layer of nice rich loam-in-a-bag doesn't seem to help much.  Oh, greeny things!  Why must you be so fickle!

So, among all the plants at the nursery, I left with nothing but a teeny tiny chick and hen plant in a pot barely wider than a quarter.