Gardening is loads of fun, but it can be hard on the ego.
Some years ago, a friend of mine stopped short halfway through my garden and pointed. "Are those peonies?" he asked.
I said yes, they were.
"Peonies!" he said, shaking his head. "How did you manage to get peonies to grow?"
"I just planted them," I said. "I stuck them in and they came up."
"Mine didn't," he said, frowning. "And I tried three times."
"Maybe your soil is different."
He grunted. "My soil is exactly the same as yours."
"I use chicken manure," I told him. "And bone meal too. Maybe that's what you need."
"Yeah." He gave me a sour look. "So did I."
I shrugged, but it was hard not to swell with pride. My friend had a much nicer garden than mine, but I'd managed to get peonies to grow and he hadn't! Maybe I was developing a green thumb at long last.
The other week, I visited my friend Dina. Just outside her house, there is a bed filled with periwinkles. They are healthy and vigorous and studded with little blue flowers. They make me feel sick with envy: I can't grow periwinkles.
"How do you get such great periwinkles?" I asked.
Dina gave me a funny look. "Periwinkles? It's not hard to grow periwinkles."
I know this must be true: everybody tells me. Not being able to grow periwinkles is like not being able to grow dandelions.
"They don't work for me," I mumbled.
"Do you break up the soil?"
"Of course."
"Make sure they get enough water?"
"Duh." This is Scotland, after all.
"Then your problem shouldn't be getting them to grow, it should be getting them to stop."
When I went home, I planted the periwinkles Dina dug up from her garden and watered them in. I need them for a weed-riddled patch, but I was kind: I started them off in a relatively weed-free area. A days later I went outside to see how they were doing. They looked wilted and sullen, like teenagers asked to do an unpleasant chore. I watered them anyway. Two weeks later, I came out again and they looked even more pathetic. It was obvious they weren't going anywhere.
"It doesn't look like they've taken," I told Dina the next time I saw her.
"Take some more cuttings," she advised. "Believe me, anybody can grow periwinkles."
"I've got some great peonies, though," I bragged, stuffing my next lot of periwinkles in a plastic bag. "My peonies look fantastic this year."
"Yes," she said. "Mine are doing well too."
I miss my friend who couldn't grow peonies.
