Miracle-Blo

I love the springtime. You've never truly lived until you've experienced springtime in the suburbs, watching two squirrels fornicating in a tree while a third watches on the same branch, in uncomfortably close proximity.

One of the great pleasures of living in the suburbs in the month of May is that you get assaulted by all manner of fragrances emanating from the gardens and flowerbeds of your neighbors and not-quite-so-neighbors. Flowers are, I feel, wonderful representations of neighbors-- they're colorful, effervescent, aesthetically pleasing, you don't have to make small-talk with them, and your dogs can pee on them as long as you're furtively glancing around you to make sure no one's looking.

We're trying to grow broccoli, pumpkins, tomatoes, and peppers ourselves. We tried sunflowers in the front garden beds, but I think God has placed a zoning restriction on us growing anything of pleasing color on our property. The mums looked pretty for approximately two weeks last year, but that was about it. The phlox looks, um, flummoxed.

Because we have such piss-poor luck with flowers ourselves, we are left to enjoy the flowering yumminess that our neighbors seem to have no trouble at all exuding for all the world to see. If you Google Earth'd our street (like what I just did with the English language?) it would probably look like a fucking cotton candy village. I don't know how these people do it.

At least, I didn't... until I saw a commercial on television this morning. And then it hit me.

Performance-enhancing drugs.

That's right: my neighbors are using Miracle-Gro.

The fucking cheating bastards.

The revelation was so shocking to me, so unalterably clear, so inescapably blatant. My neighbors, these people that I wave to my begrudgingly suburban way, these people whom I have helped shovel snow and these people in whose windows my wife peers to get decorating ideas, these people who park their black VW Passat wagons the wrong way on our street, these people.... these people..... are plant and flower druggies.

Can you picture them? They're the elderly guy in the short-sleeve collar shirt. They're the Vietnamese woman chasing after the diaper-wearing toddler. They're the middle-aged guy with a beer-gut and no shirt. They're the volunteer firefighter with whacker strobe lights all over his Ford Explorer. See them. See them in your mind's eye.

Now, picture them walking, slackjawed, through the Lawn & Garden aisles of your favorite home improvement store with an orange, square logo and a fucking annoying Doing Dial. They're in some kind of spray-feed-induced fog as they reach for 4.5 pound jugs of Miracle-Gro Shake'n Feed All Purpose Plant Food Plus Weed Protector.

Plant "Food" they say? Plant Crack-Attack, I say.

I'm sorry, but check out the "Where not to use" instructions on the product info for this bad boy:

"Do not use on flower seeds, lawns or in enclosed areas such as greenhouses. Do not apply to myrtle as injury may result."

Wha?

Injury to what? The myrtle? Or is it injury to whom? Is there going to be some kind of explosion where myrtle shrapnel will lodge itself in my eyebrows and/or proboscis? Injury may result, huh? Sounds like fucking drugs to me, pal.

I don't understand how supposedly legitimate retailers can go along their merry way selling these nefarious products whose only purpose is to engorge the stamens and augment pistils to Hulktesticle proportions. Where is the indignant outcry amongst anti-doping advocates? Where are the petitions and the Congressional hearings? Where the fuck is TMZ with their grainy camera footage and why haven't they answered my numerous phone calls? Where are all the beautiful Irish actresses? I mean-- like, don't they have any at all? They got close with Flora Montgomery, but that was, like, years ago. And for those of you who got all hot and bothered, like me, about Natascha McElhone after watching "Ronin"-- that's just an impeccable accent. She's English.

I know, right?

I guess the message here is one of awareness. The next time you're wandering around your neighborhood and you smell the glorious scent of lilac in the breeze, or you stop to admire an impossibly large tulip bunch, think to yourself-- are these sumptuous flora the result of doping? And, if you suspect they are, since Congress and TMZ and Natascha McElhone won't act, I see no other recourse but vigilante justice. Let your dog dump all over that skeez.

Your former D.A.R.E. officer would be proud.