Things I never want in my garden June 15, 2010

1. Flowers that landscapers use for Exciting Seasonal Color, like celosia and petunias and dusty miller and most wretched of all, ornamental kale, which always makes me wish I had a 7-iron with me.

2. Eggplant. How can something that looks so pretty be so revolting? I tried here to think of a celebrity to which I could equate it, but revoltingness is so anathema to prettiness in humans.

3. Cilantro. I don’t like eating it and I’m not growing it. Ditto cumin, which I’ve always felt had kind of a dirty-gym-clothes aroma.

4. Pumpkins. What would I possibly do with more than one pumpkin a year? For that matter–what would I possibly do with ANY pumpkins, given that I’m too scared of klutzily filleting myself to carve a Jack-o’-lantern?

5. Ornamental gourds. Right up there with crocheted Thanksgiving-turkey throw pillows and dish towels depicting Santa Claus in long red underwear in terms of seasonal decorative objects having no intersection whatsoever with any stylistic theme in my house.