Seven bits of garden randomness

Karen over at Breezy Break tagged me last week, and I've been mulling it over.

1. My favorite vegetables all start with the letter "A,": Avocado, Asparagus and Artichoke. Yet I've never managed to grow them. Tried artichoke once, but it never flowered (file under manmade drought; I was not good about giving it extra water). Asparagus requires a special sandy bed and at least three years until you get a crop. Never got around to that project. Avocados, well, those come from pits that live in a little vase on your window sill until they shrivel up and get moldy (see manmade drought, above).

2.Houseplants hate me. (See manmade drought, above.)

3. My gardening mantra: Plants want to grow. If they fail to thrive, they're not doing so out of spite.

4. Gardening is a lesson in patience. Bulbs in particular teach this. You spend all this time digging holes in the fall, getting dirty and tired, and you have nothing to show for it until months and months later. But what a payoff!

5. A corollary of the above is a comforting phrase to remember when planting perennials: First year sleep, second year creep, third year leap!

6. In college in the South, I had this crazy plan to plant kudzu in my dorm room and get it to cover an entire wall with the help of some netting. This plan failed miserably, as the kudzu failed to thrive indoors. Who says you can't kill kudzu?

7. I kind of like weeding, especially after it rains.

I am not going to tag seven people, just five: Kris at Gardens on the Lake, Szarka at Front Step Design, Meresy at Edge Effect, Lisa at Mappa Mundi and Barb at Moonbeam's Poodles.