Crybaby Plants

At first, all I was going to do this week was dig up the turf for my new flowerbeds.

"But we've been in these pots our whole lives," the Wax Myrtles cried. "Our roots are all twisted up."

"I know, guys, but I want to wait until the Fence Men finish so they don't step on you."

"You're not going to plant us right up at the fence, are you? You know we get to be 10 feet wide. Plant us far enough out so we won't be in the way."

"I don't know, they aren't going to be careful around you."

"Look, we're four feet tall. We aren't scared of any Fence Men. Besides, what if there's some delay? It's supposed to rain Monday. We're liable to still be in these pots come Christmas, wasting all this time while the soil is warm and we could be developing roots. " (Wax Myrtles, you'll notice, have a tendency toward melodrama.)

"You'll be delayed two days, max."

"You're assuming you'll have a free weekend between now and Christmas. That soil is still nice and toasty now. If we get an early winter," they said, (playing the freak-weather card), "you'll wish you had planted us in November."

So I relented. Like we're even going to have winter, what with global warming and all.

Then the Tea Olives and Quince started lobbying for early transplanting, making the case that they would actually be safer in the new Winter Garden than in their current home, which was right next to the fence.

By that point, the Japanese Hollies, the Gardenia, and the Forsythia were watching the proceedings and clamoring to be moved, and the barberries, who were perfectly fine in their pots, not the least bit potbound, demanded to know why everyone else was getting planted and not them.

Once the barberries were in the ground, the gold-leaved Spirea pointed out, politely but firmly, that their leaves would make a nice contrast at the front of the bed, and besides, they wouldn't be at all in the way of the Fence Men there.

And the hydrangeas! One of them was near the fence, so she definitely needed to be moved, but you know how hydrangeas are. One gets a new bed, the other two have to be right there beside her. Then the Koreanspice viburnum started whining about how he wasn't going to be the only plant left over there with those heavy-booted Fence Men tromping around, so I hauled him up to the newly created grove around the Japanese Magnolia, just so he would shut up.

Am I running a garden here, or what?