FOMOOP

The Fear of Missing Out On Plants (FOMOOP) is real.

My youngest sister comes down with it every spring and pushes me to “let” her buy her annual flowers earlier and earlier each year.

I’ve done a good job so far of holding her back, but even she knows that spring has warmed up fast around here this year, and here at the beginning of May, the extended forecast shows no signs of even tinkering with frost.

We are about two weeks ahead of schedule, at least around here, where Mother’s Day is the usual date when we are frost-free.

It’s go time.

So my sister bought another trunkful of plants late yesterday at the local greenhouse. I went back earlier today and bought my first batch of summer annuals. I’ll probably go again tomorrow.

A gardener must do what a gardener must do. FOMOOP is real. You will miss out on plants if you sit like a queen on a tufted mushroom, declaring to anyone who will listen that you will not give in to this earlier date; you will wait until after Mother’s Day!

Good luck with that, as they say. If you do that around here your FOMOOP will soon be a full-blown case of MOOP and no one wants anyone to have that.

Good luck and happy shopping. Be nice at the greenhouse or garden center. Keep your wagon out of other people’s way, and never ever shop from someone else’s wagon or cart.

(That daisy picture really has nothing to do with summer annuals. It’s a common ox-eye daisy, now blooming in my garden. I was too lazy to go out a take a picture of some of the plants I bought today. You understand, don’t you?)