The local botanical gardens has a garden market every year, with vendors setting up booths and selling plants, gardening supplies, yard art, mulch, various accessories. So if you looked at it from a certain angle, and squint, you could consider it a 'yard sale'. I volunteered to spend the day there on Friday. I've been helping for several years, and knew my assignment as a 'runner' quite well.
But this year, my job changed to 'face painting'. It was gratis, a freebie, along with a table set up out of the traffic pattern for parents to park kids to do crafts while they shopped. A good idea. Except for the fact that there were no kids in attendance. Which suited me perfectly.
I sat around, being a bug on the wall, listening to conversations about planting things, observing people picking and choosing, discussing where and how to plant. Occasionally adding my two-cents worth. Wandering. Kibitzing. Visiting with people I seldom see. I think I saw three kids in the course of the day. While I was congratulating myself for choosing Friday instead of Saturday. Knowing that 99% of the kids would be in school instead of running errands and plant sale shopping with mom.
Trying to avoid buying growing things. And doing a pretty good job until I saw some little 'painted' ferns I fell for. I'd seen some lushly growing in a bed last spring, and had some lust. So I bought four small plants. I was so confident I would not be making any purchases at the plant sale ( yeah, I know: ridiculous idea, right?) I didn't take any cash, and ended up buying my little fern pots with a credit card.
I think of all the things I would have loved to see growing around the house, and how many I left there, knowing other people will be paying for, lugging them home, digging holes, planting, keeping watered. I made the right decision to 'just walk away', but they were all so gorgeous, beautiful, full of blooms, desirable, tempting, I'm still having regret. Thankful that I don't have all that hole digging work ahead of me, but a bit of remorse to know they will not be gracing my personal vistas. Or eaten by local deer.
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