Gardening can be murder: Here’s why this long-married couple decided against foxglove
Over the past nearly 40 years, I’ve been engaged in a divide-and-conquer theme with my husband. This means each of us became CEO in areas of our lives that we have a natural talent for, enjoy doing or, frankly, are just better at.
Now, sometimes we have handed over areas of responsibility. For example, early in our marriage I paid all the bills until I told my husband that job was lousy and I was quitting. It was most certainly a job I didn’t have a natural talent for since I have a habit of transposing numbers. Which is not exactly what you want when balancing a checkbook.
At other times, we’ve handed a responsibility back and forth. This has occurred most with lawn care. My husband was the keeper of the green until we had children. But when I discovered the amount of alone time mowing provided I, with ardent enthusiasm, took over that task.
Ah, the joy of putting on my hearing protection earmuffs and just zoning out while mowing the grass. My husband was inside wrangling our kids while I blissfully couldn’t hear any of the drama. Was it any wonder I pushed the mower very slowly.
But over time my husband has been encroaching on my turf, attempting to reclaim some of the yard beautification efforts. Most recently he’s been seduced by English gardening shows, where 7-foot-tall hollyhocks, lady’s mantle and foxglove form enchanting milieus that scream English country house — and murder.
Yes, murder, because it seems like every other Agatha Christie novel had someone being killed with foxglove from the garden. For those of you not into poisonous flowers, foxglove is used in the heart medication Digitalis, but can be fatal. Even better for killers, foxglove mimics a heart attack so the chance of getting away with murder is quite excellent.
When I excitedly told my husband I was all in on trying to have a small English garden, I did share that tidbit about foxglove. I was thinking he would be impressed by my breadth of knowledge but instead he acted a little scared. I was tempted to ask him if he thought I might try to kill him one of these days, but I decided I didn’t want to know that answer.
Last week we began phase one of our garden. It started with an impressive workout called hauling 30 soil bags to our backyard. After that, my husband and I had to work together to build several elevated raised garden beds. It did not go well. Primarily because I’m more of a “who needs instructions?” kind of gal, while my husband actually seems to enjoy reading the instructions — at least twice.
Our two dogs, sensing that the sniping was going to escalate to the “neighbors outside in their yards might hear us bickering” level, sought refuge in the house. Our cat, though, stayed right in the thick of it. Actually, he took a front row seat by perching himself in a wheelbarrow, giving us flagrant side-eye the entire time.
At some point in our garden “discussion” I looked at my husband and said, “Foxglove is starting to look pretty good right now isn’t it?” His reply was a pithy, “no kidding.” Fortunately, crisis was averted because between all the instruction “debate” we, and by that I mean mostly my husband, got the beds built.
Now all we have to do is plant the seeds and wait for the flowers to bloom. And just in case you’re wondering, we are not planting foxglove.
We both decided to go with flowers that haven’t been featured as the instrument of murder in mystery novels.
Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs, on Twitter at @snarkynsuburbs on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.
