I don’t know if there’s been an official designation from the American Medical Association or any off-label uses of prescription drugs to treat it, but I will admit that I have G.E. That’s Garden Envy. As in, “Hi, my name’s Garry and I have Garden Envy.” “Hi, Garry!”

I’ve always enjoyed gardening over the years, but lately it’s reached epic proportions. I’ve become obsessed with having a bigger and better garden that will draw the attention of the local garden club’s annual tour of homes. It’s like when the serpent told Eve, “Eat of this fruit and your garden will be the best in all of creation.”

Things started out innocently enough and took a while to develop. When Annie and I  moved into our house in Spokane 22 years ago, the yard, like the house it surrounded, was a giant reclamation project. The area between the dilapidated privacy fence and the alley was an “out of sight, out of mind” area and the weeds stood four feet tall. Garbage had been dumped in one section, and for years we pulled tin cans and broken glass out of the ground as we tried to clean it up. There were out-of-control volunteer trees and intentionally planted trees in some prime gardening spots.

Our first few years were spent working on the lawn. That was the “gateway drug” to gardening. Before long, keeping the dandelions under control just wasn’t providing enough satisfaction. I had been wrestling with a leaky pond and water feature for a number of years, but never could get the cracks sealed so it would consistently hold water. So I decided to to poke some holes in the bottom and use it as a giant planter. We bought a load of manure and topsoil and expanded the garden area around the former pond with what was left over after the pond was filled in. I bought wall bricks and built a wall around the garden to keep the grass at bay. A few years later I added a 2×8 elevated planter box to make it easier on my aging back to harvest vegetables. And the joys of composting became rather addicting.

We always had flowers to look at as we entered or left the house, but never spent a lot of time gazing at them. We always went to Duncan Gardens or the Gaiser Conservatory at Manito Park if we wanted to do that. But that was before I came down with G.E.

It started out innocently enough. One day last December my friend and co-worker Leslie Woodfill came into the office and remarked, “My whole kitchen smells wonderful from the blossoms from my Meyer lemon tree!” What was that? It was like 20 degrees outside with a foot of snow on the ground, and she had a citrus tree in bloom? Her lemon tree was growing in a pot in her kitchen, and when the weather was warm she moved it out to the porch. And she made lemonade with the lemons!  I had to have one! Thanks to Jeff Bezos, no one every has to leave their house ever again, so I went on Amazon.com and ordered me one live Meyer lemon tree that was delivered to my office, already potted and everything.

That was just the beginning. I commented that it looked like she had a lot going on in her back yard, and she showed me pictures of what it looked like in the summer. “Wow,” I said. “That looks just like an English garden! I always thought it would be neat to have one of those!” And my Garden Envy kicked into full bloom. Now, it never occurred to me that a English garden typically was located on an English estate substantially larger than the 50×100 lot that our house sits on. I soon hatched plans to expand the rock garden (home to the former leaky koi pond) to the west in a 10×10 plot in front of our deck. There was some shade for a row of hostas, which never had done well in the too-sunny front yard, and I was thinking a nice park bench might be a nice addition so we could sit and enjoy the garden. Unfortunately, with the ginkgo tree and lilac bush already in the expansion area, the English garden quickly got scaled back. But with an additional rose bush, some potted flowers, some red bark and an expansion of the garden wall, it looked pretty darn good. I added a hose irrigation system from gardeners.com to keep it looking nice all summer long.

Like anyone in the throes of Garden Envy, I couldn’t let it rest. Leslie looked at a photo of the lilies in the rock garden, and said they needed to be divided this fall. She said I should be thinking of places in the yard where I wanted to plant them. Hmm, I thought. We could put some in front of our front porch, but that wouldn’t be nearly enough room. We have trouble with things growing well there, anyway. That started me thinking again. My old friend, the wall bricks from Lowe’s, served me well in the back yard. I decided to have a 12×4 raised bed around our flagpole, and add the same color bricks in front of the front porch to allow for a layer of good dirt for planting. While Annie and I were still trying to figure out when I would have time to do the work, they went on sale and I was able to buy the 84 bricks AND have them delivered for what I originally planned to spend for just the bricks. I can advise other aging baby boomers, if you have the opportunity to have building materials delivered, instead of loading them into your cart, then loading them into your vehicle, then unloading them at home, then by all means do it.

Annie and I spent a Saturday and a Sunday afternoon digging up sod and positioning bricks, and two Saturdays later we spent six hours in the sun moving two-and-a-half yards of dirt into into the two new raised beds. We ordered the dirt from the Spokane Boys nursery, and they dumped it in the front yard right where we needed it. I had done the math to calculate the cubic footage of dirt required, and it would have worked out to something like 67 of those big bags of topsoil at Lowe’s. Which we would have had to have moved something like three times to get into position in the yard.

All that remains now is dividing and transplanting the lilies, adding some tulips and other early bloomers, and waiting for spring. All that remains … or is it? “Hi, my name’s Garry, and I have Garden Envy.” “Hi, Garry!”