No matter that I have been planting annuals for the better part of 25 years; I have yet to get to that point where I have had enough. It’s a yearly conversation I have with myself, usually in late February. Do I still want to do this? Would I like some other career? Am I done with my career-would I just like a job? Another words, I am wringing my hands and fretting such, it would make you laugh.
Incidentally, my idea of a good job would be to gang mow 1-75 between Detroit, and Flint, and back. Repeatedly, through 3 seasons. No phones to answer, no problems to solve-just headphones blasting whatever music seems good that day. A responsibility for short grass, and short grass, only. Some days, the Mozart Requiem (fall music for sure) and other days, Aretha Franklin, or the Propeller Heads. Or Bob Dylan-that would be good. I would sculpt that grass for miles, and look forward to that sculpture’s next incarnation. I would park my mower and that job at the end of the day, and head for home. 
But I am not ready for that, yet. I still love that I have my home and my garden-but also that I have lots of other gardens that belong to me in a certain way, as I’ve designed and planted them.
There are the people that own those gardens with whom I have a relationship. I think God steered me to this career-as I have more gardens and landscapes than years left, that I want to plant.
That an annual garden, or any garden for that matter, is ephemeral is key to my love for them. So intensely present all season, one good frost and poof, gone. Why do without memories like these?
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