Winter is upon us, which means it’s time for my yearly, failing attempt to have Jalopy Lane win the Winter Gardening Excellence Award. I keep encouraging the neighbours, I really do, and winter flowers are a bit hardier and thus easier to grow. You hardly have to water them at all! This year I’m thinking of just ordering a mass of seeds online and poking them through people’s doors. You never know what spurs people, but I can guarantee that people will be more motivated when money isn’t involved. Though who am I fooling…my house will look like a Winter Wonderland garden while everyone else’s looks like a compost heap.

I’ve given up on the summer award. Last year I tried to call everyone together for a tutorial on how to take care of dahlias. They can be a little bit tricky, especially if they’re planted in a place that receives disproportionate sun time, but they look absolutely stunning when grown correctly. In fact, dahlias are what won me the state-level potted plant award. Honestly, while some folks put blood, sweat and tears into growing such ugly flowers, I knew what the judges would want to see. It’s not sonatini hippeastrums, lovely though they are. You need vibrancy for these sorts of competitions.

One more winter. The  sonatini hippeastrums will see us through, I know it. I just…know it. Of course, they’re not going to win the street award. We could coat Jalopy Lane in gerberas, but the judges would just say it was an eyesore, and I’d agree with them. See what I have to put up with? I’m trying to get people to grow not only nice flowers, not only complimenting flowers, but also a wide variety. It’s rather like pulling one’s own teeth out, the way I see Nathan Klein across the road trying to mount his scarlet runners only a few centimetres down, patting the dirt and calling it a day. Or the Robinsons next door, whose cat ruins all they attempt to grow and they just think it’s cute. And then Muriel…her garden is a war zone, which makes sense because she’s a cranky, militant old bat.