In the beginning, the earth was a formless wasteland

What's said in Genesis is true for anyone surveying their new garden for the first time. Formless wasteland and chaos. Sure, some of us may get that one-in-a-million chance to inherit a garden from its former caretaker, and continue the effort of boundless love and backbreaking labor they started for you; most of us, however, get nothing of the sort. Yet even knowing just how many years of effort it takes to get that garden you dreamed of, and even worse knowing that our efforts most likely won't survive our time on the property, we still soldier on. What causes this unique disease, the mental illness called "green thumb" whose primary symptom is constantly dirty fingernails and a bookcase full of Rodale titles?

In my case the green thumb seems to have been transmitted from my family. My earliest memories are of my Nunu's garden. My Nunu didn't have a traditional backyard; instead he had a vegetable garden that has reached epic proportions in my memory. I remember the long trellis of concord grape vines lining the driveway, the cherry tree that never seemed to yield fruit to anyone but the birds. Long rows of tomatoes and carrots. The large patch of dandelion, which my Nunu would puree into a sort of green smoothie that would absolutely disgust us grandkids. The peas, oh my the peas. Probably my first memory of his house is sitting at the long, long kitchen table with my Nunu and his siblings, my aunts Lil, Enis, and Teresa, my uncles Norm and Nello, all shelling peas. There were almost a dozen bushels of peas, because of course everyone had their own garden and everyone had harvested their peas. I'd never had peas like that before, and until recently, hadn't had any since.

If the virus for vegetable gardening came from my father's family, the floral gardening definitely came from my mother. My mother's yard can only be described as a showcase. She's taken her bland empty box of a suburban yard and transformed it into a miniature strolling garden; the only grass in her backyard is a 15' by 15' square which serves more as a design element than an actual lawn. I had wedding pictures taken in her backyard, and everyone who sees those photos just has to know where they were taken. Her backyard was always a haven for butterflies, childhood memories of which have definitely inspired my own butterfly garden. Earlier on in life it was the ever-present wildlife in the yard that intrigued me; the little toad that lived in a hole in her limestone rock wall, the ever-present birds nests in the trees, the interesting bugs I could find by flipping over paving stones (a habit which infuriated her to no end). As I got older it was the plants themselves that intrigued me. The yard grew more and more shady as time when on and trees grew, so my mother replaced many of her ordinary sun-loving plants with unusual shade-loving wildflowers. The bloodroot, used as a dye by natives, which would pop up its white flowers seemingly out of nowhere in the spring. Dutchman's breeches, just because of the hilarious name. Solomon's seal, which for some reason I used to eat the seeds from as a child (thankfully they seem to have been non-poisonous).

Although I've been living with gardens all my life, it really wasn't until we bought our house that the green thumb virus, dormant for so long, began to surface. Though the yard wasn't entirely a formless wasteland, it was what I think would qualify as an amorphous wasteland. The backyard was an empty slate; all grass, with signs that there had originally been some sort of flowerbed along one fence (this later turned out to have had canna in it). The front yard was a classic example of someone who likes the idea of gardening, but doesn't quite know how to execute it. There were beautiful azaleas along the front of the house, behind which was a riot of some of the most overcrowded and disease-riddled roses I'd ever seen. The boxwood hedges had been sheared into nice shapes, but the deadwood had never been removed, so behind the thin screen of green was a snarl of dead branches looking like a Gorgon's hair. I'm not sure what flowers they originally had in the beds, as the only survivors were one daffodil, one tulip, two crocus, and the ever-present dianthus. Of course I can't forget the greatest crime, the huge old oak tree near the street, which for some reason the previous owner had decided to top. What should have been a graceful sentinel shading our lawn and home, instead looked like some comical monstrosity: a giant green Q-tip, strangely deformed and with no aesthetic appeal. Even now that Q-tip mocks me, and fills me with helpless rage against the person who committed this crime against Nature in the most literal sense.

But rather than be daunted by the state of entropy I was moving into, I was invigorated. The green thumb took me like a fever, making me delirious with aspirations which I still don't think I'll be able to achieve, but I'm going to try anyway. Because at the end of the day, I know that this sickness brings me a greater happiness and quality of life than I would ever have gotten by just putting down rocks.