Thursday, April 04, 2013

The crotchety gardener, Pinterest, and me

I love Pinterest. I hate Pinterest. Anyone else feel this same duality? Pinterest is filled with images of ridiculous overly twee crafting/recipes/nail art, while delivering visual loads of ideas and eye candy for fashion, design, gardening and the like. Love/hate. I suppose it's really about curation, a word I have come to love more and more.

I'm finding the negative voice inside of me when viewing many gardening images on Pinterest. The reality of things, and what may look lovely for a photo op, in reality, is ridiculous to maintain, impossible to obtain in the first place, or completely wrong for the climate I live in. It's making me roll my eyes and guffaw out loud at the screen.

Not wanting to be a negative ninny, I never comment like this on Pinterest. Instead, I'm saving it all for here on my blog. You are welcome.

Let's get to my crotchety gardener review of Pinterest garden-tagged items, shall we?

How to turn stairs into a death trap:

Now imagine the reality. After one month, the sedums grow above the step and you break them off every time you descend and ascend the stairs. Aunt Matilda trips on one and breaks a hip, and you spend hours carefully tugging out the weedy clover, popweed and even grass that like to grow in there as well.

Palette gardening and the living wall:
See those tiny areas of soil between the water loving planks of wood? See the plants plucked in there all twee and sweet? Fast forward to a hot, dry summer and you tied to a hose every single ding dong day frantically trying to keep them alive. Don't even think of going away for a few days or you'll return to an UNLIVING wall of dried up, sad plants.

Color coordinating your clothing/tools/flowers:
I've filed this one under Fakegardening.This cannot be real. You want real? Let's take a photo in my garden...hold on while I take off my mismatched muddy gloves and grab my neon orange handled trowel to dig out that bright yellow dandelion growing right there at the base of my hydrangea. And yes, I see that dead branch in there. I'm getting to it!

Oh wait. Here's a photo from Pinterest of a typical workday in my garden. Yours looks like this, right?

This is a perennial "gardening" favorite on Pinterest:
 I think it would look great next to this:
Oh no wait. This one:
I love alliums, and the fun form and playfulness they bring to a garden:
Hey kid! Hands off the alliums!

Nothing says I Love to Garden!!! like a dirty pink bra:


What would Pinterest be without words plastered on walls, clothing, or on pots?
Okay okay. I'll stop. You get the picture. Aren't you glad you're not here when I'm on Pinterest? Good news, I'm mainly using it as a place to curate things I see from around the web. Feel free to guffaw at my boards here. Oh Pinterest. You crack me up. Not really.

18 comments:

Jacquelyn said...

Hahaha!! So true. There are a lot of pretty pictures on there to wade through before you get to anything practical. Fun to browse, though.

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU! You said all the things I was thinking while guilting myself over why my garden doesn't look like the cover of "Cottage Gardens" magazine. I would LOVE to be there snarking over Pinterest with you, haha! You are right on sista! But I still loves me my Pinterest...

scottweberpdx said...

For the record, I'm kind of sick of succulents used as decorations. Using succulents has become the gardening equivalent of bedazzling.

Alison said...

Hehe, I'm so relieved, I think I've only Pinned one of these.

LOL at Scott's comment.

Amelia said...

This is so funny & spot on! I've thought the same thing when looking at quite a few things on pinterest!

Heather said...

I've refused to get sucked into Pinterest for this very reason - I am never going to live up to the photos, so why bother?

Kate said...

I am not the kind of person to leave a comment on pinterest unless it's kind or helpful, but it annoys me to no end how many photoshopped pictures are in the gardening section. Also the idea that pallets, paint chip, or paint stir sticks are free and you can use them for crafts or gardening projects gets me every time. It's theft!

Heather said...

Oh, the pallets and the succulents drive me crazy! And lavender. As if it looks that nice after the first year.

1914house said...

Ha! This is great. Do it again sometime, okay!

danger garden said...

I think I've seen you pin a couple of images from my blog. Please tell me it wasn't for a post like this...

LeLo said...

It really is a love/hate, right?!
Danger Garden, I HAVE pinned some images from your blog, gathering ideas for a friend with a new yard and a desire for a modern garden. It's all good!

GRACE PETERSON said...

What I did was create a special board just for all the silly gardening stuff, such as that bra, toilet and the painted tires, etc. That way when I'm feeling really annoyed or sad, I can click and scroll and laugh and the funny things people come up with.

As for the sedum steps, that is just stupid. All I can see is flattened plants and stained concrete, not to mention the paramedics with their stretcher reaching for pour Aunt Matilda.

And the pallet "wall garden" also stupid. No matter what people try to do to dress them up, a pallet is still a pallet. But I hear they make great firewood.

Great post, LeAnn! Have a great weekend.

Kalyan said...

simply beautifully captured shots...lovely!

Rosemary said...

Thank you for saying this! You know how those magazines for women fill our heads with inadequacies we never knew we had - I'd hate gardening to become like that. Let's expose those fraudulent photos and keep our heads in reality :)

Kathryn said...

Love the snark! I was starting to feel in the minority that even though 287 people have repinned it, no, I don't want painted tires as planters.

And on a totally nerdy note, I second what someone said above about Photoshopping, but only because some flowers are NOT in bloom at the same time no matter where you live. I feel kinda bad for the people who don't realize that...

Unknown said...

I'll look at the silliness of some of the gardeining projects as a great source of mirth. Some like the bra container is throughly amusing and just plain good eye candy, fullstop.

Rozanne said...

OMG. Cracking up. The dirty pink bra is the worst!!!!!!!

Lisa said...

Ha! I could hardly agree more.....I say after spending most of my free time today on Pinterest. Lol!