By Holly Kozelsky
They have discovered my weakness and are going after me relentlessly, and it is a weird and creepy experience of modern technology that feels like stalking.
It all started with the Pipit daffodil.
Back in September, I ordered some lovely white Thalia daffodils and some blue Muscari that is a great combination with them. My gardens have a large area of those already, but for years it’s been hanging over my head that I need to order more to fill in that area.
Finally, I got around to ordering the tall white daffodils with the short blue flowers to put under them, as well as a few other sacks of bulbs of different varieties. I really hemmed and hawed over the cute Pipit daffodil but didn’t get it. The Pipit is the opposite of what you expect a daffodil to be: white in the center and on the cup, and yellow on the petals.
However, the cute Pipit floated around in my head until a couple of weeks ago, when I decided to order it.
Oh my! By then – Oct. 30 – the Pipit was no longer $32 for 10 bulbs but rather $13. That waiting had been good. What else was on discount that I might could use?
Well – a Blue Fortune Hyssop, 100 Byzantine gladioli, a Top Brass Peony, an Arabian Knight Turk’s Cap lily, three Hardy Tennessee Ostrich Ferns, three Cinnamon ferns, three Jack in the Pulpits, three Virginia blue bells, a Crème de la Crème phlox and 2 Months of Alliums, all between 72% and 84% off.
By then every time I turned on the internet it was a constant bombardment of ads for flower companies, and I felt sheepish for my excesses and to be such an easy target.
Alas, the next night I really blew it. I was depressed over something and had a couple of glasses of wine.
I thought I’d see what else may be on discount that I had overlooked the night before. I was under the double-whammy of retail therapy compounded by being tipsy.
The result?
A lot more flower bulbs and root clumps and ferns, including accidentally another 100 Byzantine gladioli which I had forgotten that I already had ordered.
Another result is that I have bruises all over my knees and cricks in my back and now wobble instead of walk from all that planting. I ain’t as young as I used to be.
Same thing happened again when I was in Joey Arrington’s Speedway Service Center (in the old Sears building) for an oil change yesterday. That waiting room is like a living room but bigger and cleaner. You could meet you friends there for drinks ($1.25 for a soda) and be more comfortable and have it quieter than at a coffee shop. I got all nestled into an easy chair and opened my computer to do a little work but decided to see what other flower companies might be running a big sale …
I sure didn’t have to put in any effort whatsoever, because all that showed up was flower ads.
When I open my phone to check anything, same thing.
When I sat down to write this column, first that showed up was the unsolicited “Spring fever got ahold of you? Pre-order your spring bulbs at … !”
Everywhere I turn around, the bulb companies are flagging me down. They are mocking my gluttony, flaunting my lack of restraint with the bold assertions that they are sure I will do it again and again.
I was feeling like a real sitting duck, my lack of self-control exposed by the pounding of flower ads every time I turn around, when I suddenly realized it could be a lot worse.
Thank goodness I hadn’t been on shopping sprees for girdles, incontinence supplies or dirty movies.
