I have a garden that’s in front of my condo and unfortunately the soil is a sand/soil mixture but mostly sand and not many of my flowers flourish in these conditions. Sand/soil mixtures are great for succulents or cacti but I prefer a nice menagerie of color in the summer. My main reason for maintaining a garden in the warmer months is because my condo sits on a busy street and everyone on my row has a garden – manicured, clipped, mulched. The first year I lived at my home, my neighbor asked me probably a dozen times if and when I was planning on putting a garden in.

“Everyone here does a nice garden.”

Well keep your eyes open, lady. As a houseplant mom, I prefer to keep the inside of my dwelling sprawled with greenery but I can get dirty no problem. I used to manage a greenhouse in Massachusetts. I know how to not kill things.

This year I completely disregarded a color scheme and slapped every possible flower that I thought would live in my front garden. Of the mess I made, my African daisies bloomed. They’re an amazing shade of bright magenta and they basically just scream at me when I walk past them to get into my house. I love it. They stand out so much and they’re loud and vibrant and they bring me joy. What I learned about magenta, though, is that it isn’t actually a color.

Magenta is defined as “an extra-spectral color, meaning that it is not found in the visible spectrum of light. Rather, it is physiologically and psychologically perceived as the mixture of red and violet/blue light, with the absence of green.” I find that absolutely fascinating. It’s amazing that our brains are so thrown off by the absence of something as common and known as the color green, that it creates an amazing hue using whatever it has left to work with. It also makes me wonder, since magenta is our own brain’s perception – how different magenta will look to other people who see it. Do people walk past my house and see the African daisy as loud and bold and beautiful as I do? Or is it perception, like happiness or sadness?

People can be lacking so many things, like money, or a new car, or a boyfriend, or a parent – but what magenta are they creating? What, with every other color available – with every other thing they have (or blessing, however you want to see it) – are they creating? If magenta was a life, how bright would it be? I get down sometimes and I always embrace a good cry, but I also have one of the brightest fucking African daisies on the block. How does everyone else see their own garden?