A tinier stegosaurus reflects on how one could view this picture as the tables having been turned.

See more of my pictures on "Briane Pagel: PWNST".

Have you read "Short Stories With Long Titles?" Here's the first EVER.

This is pretty much the only superhero team that would let me join.

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Miracle-Gro for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

“Next year,” I told Sweetie, “We are getting our yard into shape.”

Our yard has been a continuous project for going on 10 years now, ever since I decided to turn it from a vacant-ish yard made mostly of grass and hickory nuts to a perennial garden made mostly of whatever it is that goes into a perennial garden. 

The problem is (a) I am not very gardenish, or whatever the word might be, and (b) I do not have a lot of budget to devote to our yard, and so my main attempts at gardening have been things like “buy plants on sale at Wal-Mart,” and “Put them in the yard” and “Hope they don’t die.”

So I decided that NEXT YEAR we were going to get serious about making our yard look nicer, and I decided it should be next year because I thought “It’s nearly November, there’s nothing much more I can do this year” and then I found out about the “Gardenieres,” which is like a superhero team for gardeners like me.

The Gardenieres are a team of gardeners, real green-thumb types, led by a master gardener, William Moss.  They are actual people doing actual gardening in actual yards who, according to legend – okay, there’s no legend but let me just roll with it, okay? – according to legend, the Gardenieres can grow anything.

So these Gardenieres are going to be going around the country and helping people with their gardens and getting people like me fired up to JUST GO DO IT and already they’re working because it turns out you can do stuff for your garden in fall.

Look at what this lady is doing:

She’s one of the Gardenieres and she’s working on her front yard, making it beautiful and interesting and “not the subject of petitions by the neighbors,” which is all the things I would like to be.

Another one of the Gardenieres created an orchard in her backyard.  An orchard.

I have a backyard, but I’m kind of afraid to go in it.  But if it was an orchard, with blueberries and vegetables and things, it’d be fantastic plus I bet I could get Mr Bunches and Mr F to run a little roadside stand and make some money on the side.

But this is really about having a yard that I can enjoy instead of a yard that is tons of work and still doesn’t look good, and those videos and tips on the Gardenieres’ website are actually superhelpful to me.  Maybe I can’t grow all the plants they can but I can grow lots of them and make sure that my plants do better than they have been with things like “Miracle-Gro® Garden Soil for Trees & Shrubs,” which it turns out is really good for keeping new trees alive when you plant them: it feeds your trees and shrubs for up to 3 months, continuously.  I didn’t even know trees ate.  Learn something new every day.

I found out about the Gardenieres on the Miracle-Gro Facebook page, so if you do outdoor or potted plant gardening you’ll definitely want to go there, “Like” the page, and talk with gardeners: share your stories and pictures and stuff. 

As for me, I’ll be out letting the yard know it doesn’t have to wait ‘til spring.  I’m coming to savd you, shrubs!