Pop With a Bloom

I am no Martha Stewart of the garden.  Nor am I related to any of her farthest kin.  More often than not, and despite sufficient water, light, and food, the plants in my garden shrivel up and die.  Or look anorexic.  Or refuse to bloom.  Or become the favorite plant of some unseen pest.  On the other hand, plants such as the half dozen dahlias I buried in the ground late last spring have grown mysteriously tall and healthy. And I have no clue why. In point of fact, this morning I noticed one of my dahlia "trees" reaches nearly beyond the height of my head. They are truly ginormous and giant, like I accidentaly dumped barrels of Miracle Grow on them.  Or maybe their growth was impacted by a wave of science-fiction level radioactivity engulfing the ballsy plants in the wee hours of the night.  Happily, they are just starting to bloom, these intimidating dahlia plants that might grow twenty feet tall.  But's it's nearly the end of July.  My daisies are spent as are the yellow and orange day lilies. The hydrangeas putter along.  Most plants have made an appearance.  "When are these things ever going to bloom?"  I texted my Mainer friend a month ago.  She had brought me six weird looking dahlia rhizomes as a dinner gift last spring which I promptly planted in my one "sun garden."  My friend's green thumb is large and in charge and her garden is massive. "Well, they take a while,"  she texted back.  Which could mean never.  I found that out by reading up. If these picky plants get too much or not enough water they may only produce lots of foliage.  No buds.  No flowers.  Just lots and lots of leaves.  See, this is what induces my jardiniere debutant mind to explode.  They need the "just right" amount of water to produce the only thing I care about, big showy flowers.  But who's gonna tell me how much that is?  It's an art or a mystery or maybe some sort of torture to garden I am finding out.  I see clearly why I didn't even bother to engage in gardening these past years.  Some deep level of my psyche knew.  I had convinced myself, but not my husband, that I thoroughly enjoyed our wild gardens with their wide variety of weeds, the plethora of feral strawberries that never bear fruit and that graceful yet menacing clingy vine that strangles the life out of all the others.  Easy care.  So it's with gratitude, surprise, and wonder, I must say, that the alien-looking dahlia rhizomes I planted deep into Mother Earth months ago, who grow with little help from me, are getting ready to pop with a bloom.