My Green Thumb Is a Sick Fucker!

Okay... that's a joke.  I don't really have a green thumb.  If I put it in a pot, I could kill a Texas Sandbur.

So it should come as no surprise to you that I leave the major gardening to Prince Charming.  As a result I have a geranium plant (actually a pelargonium if you give a shit) that has three and a half foot long stems.  It is also the reason I have an aloe plant that is over two-feet wide (I think it ate one of our cats!)  When I have nearly sucked every last ounce of life from a plant, I hand it over to the care of PC and he saves it.

So what in the world inspired me to buy a house with a full wrap around flower garden?  The fact that the previous owner planted it full of low-maintenance perinials.  And it's a damn good thing because those bastards are on their own.  I won't even pull the weeds because it might be a flower and I just don't know it.  (I pull the dandelions!  I'm sure what those are!)

All this aside, we own an acre of pasture and I wanted a plum thicket.  Yes.  The farmers thought I was crazy because to them it's just a crappy bush, but frankly... I'm too lazy to go out in 104 degree heat to hunt wild plums.  So I drug Prince-Green-Fucking-Thumb out to a road ditch where we met the 'neighbors' and dug up a fine young plum bush to plant out back.

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(2 weeks later)

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The plum bush is dead!

But the lovely ground cover that came with it is not dead.

Know what that is?

Yeppers!

POISON IVY!!

Aint that just fucking grand?!?!

So much for that grand adventure.

But please!  I'm a farmer's daughter (actually it's a rancher's daughter... but wheat... cows... what's the difference right?)  So here I am meandering through my yard looking for thistles that need dug up (because the previous owner never read a Noxious Weed flyer!) when I stumble upon this cute little fern growing in the damp shady soil beneith the trees.

Aint it cute and leafy?!?!

So I tell PC to put it in a pot so it doesn't get mowed over.  My plan was to put it in my bathroom once I was sure it was going to survive the transplant.  It survived (that should have been my first clue, right?) and continued to grow bigger and more... well... parsley like.  Hmmmm.  Does parsley grow wild in Kansas?

So today I was skimming through some native plant sites looking to identify the plants growing wild in our pasture. 

One plant name caught my eye...

"Really?  I didn't know THAT grew in Kansas"...

*click link* ...

"HOLY SHIT!!!  That looks just like my fern!" 

Shocked, I did a little more research on the plant to see if I could come to a certain indentification.  And finally... I marched out to the fern in the pot under the cedar tree and took a very close look at that bastard!!

Sure enough!  It looks just like this (minus the flowers that I'm sure will come soon enough)

Know what that shit is?

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It's not a FERN!

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It's not WILD PARSLEY!

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(but it is in the parsley family)

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IT IS

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POISON HEMLOCK!!!

(is it a sign that this occurs the one day out of the year my in-laws visit my house?)

Yeah!  Just fuck me!  To hell with a garden, someone plant me a wine vineyard because I clearly need to drink more!  (I keep telling myself, they only come once a year, why waste a good plant?)