Survival of the Fittest

Has anyone else noticed that the world falls apart in May? Everything except taxes and Christmas happens then. I have been busier the past two weeks than I am in some months. And it is all busy work - signing things, driving to events, moving piles from one place to another (snow shovel under house, box of pool crap out from under house). And then stuff starts GROWING. I have these illusions of having a green thumb, but only in a survival of the fittest sort of way. I am about to dig up my 6th dead dogwood that I have personally planted and promptly killed. I plant stuff and if it lives, great. If not, I don't mourn. However, whatever I seem to plant that does live tends to take over the other three closest plants. So far, I have learned not to plant miniature roses (mine is now about a four food wide bush and took over my herb garden), elderberry (who cares if birds love it? it is bigger than most of my trees and that is after hacking it to the ground yearly) and oregano, which is completely indifferent to dog urine and is therefore inedible but has essentially become ground cover. My rosemary bush could supply an Italian village because it failed to get the message that it doesn't like clay soil. Every year I plant stuff in my little garden and about 90% of that goes to feeding bugs, but the next year I come back and plop more stuff in and repeat the cycle. This year I decided to start tomatoes from seeds. This was surprisingly easy, except what do you do with 10 yellow tomato plants? Do what I did - stick them in the ground, promptly kill 7, then go to the store and buy 6 more tomato plants to replace them. And this year I planted some zucchini, my husband's favorite vegetable right after okra and mustard greens (got those darlings, too). My lettuce is growing nicely and I have lots of peas. My cherry tree may break under the fruit. And the best thing about all of this? They will ALL be ripe while we are out of the country, so the bugs literally will get to eat them. One year we actually wanted our cherries so we covered the tree with a net. A bird still got in and ate EVERY SINGLE ONE and sacrificed at least half of his feathers during his escape. I was mad, but that didn't last long because I had to go and drink a beer so I could have residue to kill slugs. I am so happy beer kills slugs. It is the best of all worlds. I drink enough to make me happy, then use the rest to kill my archenemy. This year I am also growing a very healthy crop of poison ivy. Both daughter and I are allergic to it, so it is someone else's responsibility.My husband, being German, can't identify it so he went out there and pulled up the last batch with his bare hands (honey! There was some vine growing up the tree, but I pulled it all down!), but unfortunately he won't do that for me anymore, so I have to hire "Yard Boy" to come and do it. He will do just about anything for me for $10 an hour, and he is teaching me about "sexting" (no, not to me, just how common it is among teenagers and how my children can sneak things past me) and all the nifty things my phone can do (it has a calendar! it can take pictures!). I love spring. Except for the fact I have to go and battle some weeds now and plant these little plants I grew from seed but don't know what they are. Except they aren't pumpkins.