Good to be Green?

Green with envy, maybe not.  But I do envy the blond gardening writer/TV personality you see pictured on her latest book - which is terrific. Oh, yeah, she had to be a good writer.  A sample quote:  "Perfection is not possible, nor is perfection what a garden is about.  It is about change that is driven by the cycles of the seasons and the aging of the plants.  No living thing is perfect."  Oh, you’ll be seeing more quotes of Suzy Bales on this site.

So it’s bad enough that she’s pretty and a wise and successful garden writer. My lower self really kicked into gear when I read about "Our Plan."  To wit:  she and her husband hired a "prominent landscape architect" to do everything imaginable to their 6-acre property on Long Island - including two ponds, a waterfall, a pool and a tennis court.  Next she "worked for" the landscape architect, helping out and soaking up a lifetime of knowledge.  Then there’s Suzy’s husband, who "never questions my garden expenses," to put it mildly, and who designs new structures for their property.  And for me the last straw is - you guessed it — her full-time gardener.

Now I love my garden and for the most part I love doing the work myself.  But Suzy here gets to design new projects that are then implemented by stronger people.  She gets to immerse herself in the gardening world and soak up what everyone else knows.  She sure doesn’t have a day job she has to grind away at in order to support herself or her gardening habit.

Okay, I’ve gotten that off my chest.  Now I can go back to reading her book and savoring the wisdom of Suzy’s terribly privileged life.  Hey, I’m just glad she found her passion in gardening.  It could have been golf.
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An important postscript after sleeping on it:  As a middle class American, I’m plenty privileged myself.  Just not terribly.