CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: GARDEN DREAMS ARE IN FULL BLOOM FOR THE YARD-LESS

It's spring, when my thoughts lightly turn to thoughts of ... mulch. Topsoil. Peat moss.

Hey, after a certain point, reality sets in. Sort of. And there's some pretty heavy symbolism in pollination.

If spring were to ever actually arrive, I'd be a ways behind schedule, but since we're apparently going to segue directly from winter to summer, I can keep right on planning my garden.

Hollyhocks in the back of the sunny plot, painted daisies, Shasta daisies, snapdragons, baby's breath, bachelor's buttons, lots of roses. And petunias.

On the shady side, a few hostas, hydrangeas, coleus, some day lilies for color. And impatiens. Gotta have impatiens.

Lots and lots of tulips everywhere, for color before the trees start leafing out and throwing shade all over the place.

With a pad of graph paper (the kind with the medium-sized squares) and a big box of Crayons, I can plot out a garden that would make Martha Stewart green with envy.

So to speak.

Unfortunately, my Technicolor dreams don't stand much chance of becoming reality.

I don't have a yard. It's hard to plot out acres and acres of flowers when the only usable land is the parking lot.

I also have very little luck with plants, even when I've actually had a yard to play with. Daffodils and tulips I can do, but who can't. And hostas. I'm good with hostas, which have great big colorful leaves and will grow with no problem where it's too shady even for grass.

I tend to kill other plants. Even house plants, which survive for years in large discount stores sustained only by stale water and fluorescent light.

If I don't kill the plants, the cat does. Not intentionally, mind you. She just likes knocking the pots off the windowsills to watch them bounce.

As a clan, we're horticulturally-doomed. In Ireland, the O'Farrells fell victim to the potato famine, and in the U.S., it's crabgrass or no grass.

Some things just aren't meant to be.

My friend Linda has a great garden. Actually, it's her back yard. She and her husband grow a little of everything, including herbs and vegetables, loofah gourds -- which the rest of us recognize as those big scouring pads we use in the shower -- and a variety of flowers she dries for potpourri and crafts.

Linda doesn't wimp out with bedding plants. She starts everything from seed. Except potatoes, but she uses seed potatoes, so that should count.

One good thing about tilling your whole yard is there's less grass to cut. Actually, that's not a bad part of living in an apartment, either. No mowing, no weeding, no raking.

No garden. It always comes back to that, especially now when daffodils and forsythia and all that other spring-stuff is so much in evidence.

Gardening's a lot of work, when you get right down to it. Digging, weeding, transplanting, praying, harvesting. It's very labor-intensive. And it's hard on the back.

But the rewards! Flowers, fresh vegetables, the chance to hang out with other gardeners and talk about ingenious ways to outsmart slugs and grubs and blackspot. That's the life.

I do have a deck at my apartment. It's fairly sunny. I could put stuff in planters.

Little stuff. Pansies. Maybe some marigolds. Salvia. Bachelor's buttons.

In the fall, fill a big tub with potting soil and plant some bulbs.

An apple tree or two in the corner...

Quick, where's the graph paper?

~Peggy O'Farrell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.