I want to tell you about the day I accidentally ordered what I thought was a small decorative bamboo plant and instead received something that looked like it could house a family of pandas. It arrived on my doorstep in a box so tall my mail carrier left a passive-aggressive note. My neighbor watched me … Read more
I still remember standing in my backyard in Phoenix, staring at a pile of dead plants and a credit card bill I didn’t want to open. I had spent nearly $400 on ornamental grasses, tropical shrubs, and yes — bamboo — that a well-meaning nursery employee swore would “do great out here.” Three months later, … Read more
I want to tell you about the day I accidentally ordered what I can only describe as “an alarming quantity of bamboo seeds” while half-asleep at 11 p.m., convinced I was being practical. My neighbor Larry — bless his heart — runs a leaf blower every Saturday morning at 7 a.m. like he’s personally declared … Read more
I watched fifty dollars worth of bamboo turn yellow, then brown, then completely dead — and I had no one to blame but myself. I thought transplanting bamboo was just like moving any other plant: dig it up, plop it in a new hole, water it, done. I was spectacularly wrong. That failure sent me … Read more
I once spent an entire Saturday smugly planting what I was convinced was black bamboo along my back fence — only to watch it slowly, mockingly, turn a warm shade of golden yellow over the following weeks. Turns out, the debate between golden bamboo vs black bamboo is a lot more important than I gave … Read more
I once tried to remove my front lawn with a butter knife. Not metaphorically — an actual butter knife, because I had somehow convinced myself that “gently loosening the sod edges” was a real technique I had invented. Forty-five minutes later, I was sitting in my driveway covered in dirt, holding a bent utensil, and … Read more
I want to tell you about the day I accidentally created the most beautiful corner of my garden — right after I made what I was absolutely certain was a catastrophic mistake. There I was, on my knees in the dirt, surrounded by plants I had ordered in a panic from three different websites, muttering … Read more
I ordered a ten-foot bamboo plant to my third-floor apartment. Without measuring my elevator. Let that sink in for a moment. I stood in the lobby of my building, staring at a cardboard tube roughly the length of a small kayak, while my neighbor Mrs. Petrovitch watched me from the mailroom with the expression of … Read more
The third plant was the one that almost broke me. I’d spent close to $200 on bamboo over two years, watched two clumping varieties turn to mush over winter, argued with my husband about whether I was “just throwing money into a hole,” and then stood in my backyard on a cold March morning staring … Read more
My husband Dave and I don’t fight often, but the summer I decided to plant a bamboo privacy fence along our back property line, we came closer to a real blowup than we had in fifteen years of marriage. I’m talking slammed doors, silent dinners, and one very tense conversation in the driveway at 10 … Read more