Ragweed Bouquets.

A cool November Tuesday.   I can hide the evidence with enough camouflage until winter comes.

I launch five small pumpkins into the air.  One after the other, deformed from a week of late-october frost (ruining their once-fun designs), they take flight to their final resting place; my backyard garden.  Against the backdrop of a rotting maple-leafed lawn, each sad orange holiday gourd is lobbed, touching down amongst the dried marigolds and depressed brown-eyed-susans, crushing some, missing others.  They barely roll once after a very satisfying ground-thud.  The sound of fist-pounding one's chest.

As the third pumpkin takes flight, the glass candleholder inside, weightless, falls away in mid-air never to be seen again in the grass and leaves.  I will try and remember to kick around this area before mowing next spring.

Note to self:  Stop lying to self.

To my left, the Italian family who still hang laundry (in almost freezing weather), are inside.  To my right, lives the bachelor.   He mowed his front lawn yesterday in a toque and mittens, carefully dividing our shared frontage.  By comparison, my lawn looks shameful.  His, manicured.  Manicured.  Manic. Cured.  Yes, fitting word for him.

There is a secret pride I have in my disinterest on the topic of gardening.  A pure, unapologetic, indolent attitude towards greenery.

To this end, I am the pariah of this neighbourhood. The only renter.  Ergo, my interest in tending the foliage of my suburban abode dwindles with each passing year.  I have no "pride of ownership" because there is simply no need.

Let me explain.

Gardening in Canada has always struck me as futile. It is a pleasure only exercised for a brief season and is moreover a glorious waste of money.  The snow will invariably come and carpet millions of man-hours and hard earned cash.

If one is to make Sisyphean comparisons here, it should be noted that poor King Sisyphus had the good-fortune of rolling his boulder up a sunny Greek mountain.  In Hades mind you, but still Greece.  He did not require milkbags in his winter boots, (to avoid Ottawa Valley 'soakers') while shovelling the driveway, risking coronaries, launching hundreds of pounds of snow on his once-coddled, and very expensive lawn.

I will not fall for this zen-approach, building sand-castles for their own sake.  My weak Grecian analogy is about punishment, pointlessness.

Gardeners are racists.  Yes, I said it.  Maybe not 'racists' as it applies to the 'human' race, but most certainly to flora.   Would that make these people florists?   Of course, florists are incredibly selective.  Prejudiced even. Biological bigots.  There are no ragweed bouquets or goldenrod boutonnières.   No one loves the unibrowed middle-child it seems, frumpily pruned out of the family photo, or garden, for that matter.

Ragweed.  Awful name. It was robbed of its Latin handle, ambrosia artemisiifolia when it became a common allergen.  Admittedly, it is my autumnal allergic arch-nemesis.  Attempt that alliteration with 'rose' or 'tulip'!   This 'weed' will take down a full-grown man and put him on the couch in front of the television with a snack for hours.   Believe me.  I say that's a 'win' for ugly plants everywhere.

The dandelion?  Fully edible from stem to floret, requiring no pollination, ph-balance, pruning. Each flower is the exact dna replica of the parent plant.  Instant flower garden, zero effort.

Prickly plants on your lawn?  Bull Thistle.  Cirsium Vulgare.  Sounds pornographic, but keeps the dogs and kids away.

So where does this leave us?    Nowhere, dear reader.

Nowhere.  That's my point.  Winter is here.   We are at a horticultural impasse.

I'm convinced now more than ever Mr. McCartney is referring to landscaping when he so lazily states:

Live and let die.