I totally agree. What ticks me off is that the local Wally-World is preparing its garden center for business! Good grief... what the heck are the Wal-Mart people thinking? It's the end of February. Zone 5. It snowed 5 inches today. More is on the way (Yah for the snow!). But what gardener in their right mind would put out plants when the temps are still in the TEENS at night? Even a May planting is not out of the woods when it comes to frost vulnerability. Big Box retailers are buffoons.

I went to a nearby Home Depot in April last year. The morning was crisp after a late hard frost. The carnage in the garden center was stunning. About 90 percent of the annual flats were dead, dying or painfully wounded. Only the pansies looked somewhat OK. I went up to the "manager" (I use that term loosely), asking, "why do you have all these tender annuals out here? Why didn't you cover your plants with plastic or a tarp?" The orange-vested moron looked at me straight in the eye and said, "We just do what corporate in Atlanta says. We'll get another truck of plants in here tomorrow anyway." No consideration for local conditions.

Back to the Wal-Mart rant... So they are prepping the garden center to be open. The ground is still frozen! Are customers this stupid. (Well, yes.) My favorite Wal-Mart garden outrage occured last summer, when the Wal-Martians set out dozens of hostas out on the hot blacktop under full scorching summer sunshine! I just couldn't believe my eyes! They were cooking their shipment of hostas. I located the store manager and gave him a brief overview of hosta/shade plant culture. To his credit, the hostas were moved to the shade when I left with my groceries, but what "garden center" would put hostas on sunbaked hot asphalt? The answer is a minimum-wage retailer. Not a true garden center. You get what you pay for. Even the plants at the big box stores are not what their Latin-bearing labels say. I've seen many mislabeled junipers, barberries and sedums. Buyer beware at big box stores.