How to Build the Perfect Urban Garden in 10 Fool Proof Steps

It's very hard to believe that in a short space of time this front bed will soon be an urban paradise.

Even harder to believe given that it got really hot and humid and I downed tools to find a beer after I found a mosquito the size of a rabbit feasting on my arm. Now a thunder storm is coming over which ties in rather nicely with my motto "if you don't succeed at first, give up."

The house in the backgroound belongs to our smug neighbors BTW. They always succeed in mowing the lawn in diagonal lines while I'm lucky to get the mower anywhere near the grass. They have neat plants in the beds. Nothing too daring or fancy. They flower right on cue. I'm sure cloning was involved somewhere down the line. I prefer the organic and random approach. The four foot tall dandelion plant may have been somewhat ungainly but it had a flower on it didn't it?

If we start rooting out creatures that look different to us the next thing we know we'll be driving Edward Scissorhands out of suburbia. Do we really all want to be the same? Why the drive to be the perfect neighbors next door? I have theories about folks who have strimmers on their Christmas list.

Contrary to common belief I used to have an interest in gardening. I saw my white and purple rock garden as a triumph of serene art over the prosaic nature of everyday life. The whites twinkled out there in the moonlight by the tinking water feature.

But successive in-laws saw fit to rip up my efforts (yes the size of my violin grows with every word written). Perhaps then I should have stormed outside screaming about the defilement of art and how the Nazis burned books en route to the Final Solution. Probably they didn't understand. They did spend a fair bit on landscaping to be fair.

But instead I grew peevish. The dreams of a perfect garden shrank to a small kernel in my head to the extent that the motion of weeding became as remote as a moon walk off one of Saturn's little known satellites.

My retreat from being Suburban Man was complete. I was lazy and worthless and labelled as such. My solution was to grab a beer and to look up the Picture of Dorian Gray.

Still I realized there is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us. That and the fact that "conscience makes egotists of us all."

So perhaps the answer is to be found in unconsionableness because only then will be cease to be egomanicas. More practically the answer is in gardening. We can only bring about transformation when we learn to hate the weeds, loathe their coarse stems and raggedly heads, wake up in a cold sweat with our hands round the necks of thistles like war veterans who wake up choking an imaginary enemy.

And if some guy with scissors for hands comes anywhere near my new look front yard he'll be driven out of the neighborhood.

How do you like the new template BTW - I got bored with the last one but I'm not sure about this one either?