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My Profile
Retro-retrospection - 2008-10-06
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8:43 p.m. - 2005-05-04
A phlox on your house! I was sitting here this morning debating what I should do. Plenty of house chores to do, but I wanted to get outside. But I had no available gardening clothes. Discouraging. It was one of those ‘have to do 3 things before you can get near the thing you wanted to do in the first place’ situations. Or as I think of it: Missionaries and Cannibals. From the old logic puzzle of having to get a certain number of missionaries and cannibals across a river with a boat that only holds a few at a time. The trick is to never leave the missionaries outnumbered. They’d be lunch. So to get to X chore I had to do W, Y, and Z chores first. I hate that. Grumbling and frowning, I went downstairs to start some laundry and got a lovely surprise. Mike had a run a couple loads through and there on top of the big pile of wrinkly unfolded clothes on the dryer were my favorite sweat pants and my ratty gardening hoodie. All clean and ready to go. POOF! The bad mood disappeared. I’m really easily pleased sometimes. But the pissy mood was gone. I was all chirked up and raring to go now that I could go outside decently covered without having to do laundry first. Got dressed. Came upstairs, stopped on the porch to lace up my sneakers and grab my hand tools and gardening gloves, then out the door into the bright sunshine. I’d bought a phlox the other day when I got the other plants and it was time to put it in the ground. The road edge slope has one patch of phlox in there with the other groundcover plants already. It’s very pretty. Since I ripped out the weeds and trash plants the other day there are several bald spots on that part of the slope. Rather than battle the weeds all summer waiting for the vinca and pachysandra to fill them in I decided to fill the gaps with more phlox. I’d just gotten the one pot of phlox last weekend. Today I sank it in the barest biggest bald spot. Looked good, if a little lonely. Then I got busy. Really, if my lower back could, it would take me to court. Sue me for cruelty and anguish or something. I went bonkers and weeded the entire rest of the slope. And then the other section past the stairs and mailbox just because I am a fool. 3 hours of non-stop weeding. On a distinctly uneven 45 degree hillside and the whole time instead of kneeling I was squatting balanced on my toes so’s not to bruise too many good plants as I chased down and ripped out the bad ones. There were many, many new bald spots when I was finished. But that slope is weed-free! No more maple seedlings. No more poison ivy. (The reason I needed my sweats and hoodie. One does not uproot poison ivy with bare arms and legs.) No mimosa trees. Not one single dandelion. And that forest of whatever they were, some kind of sticky-up thing with a tall center spike and weird fat leaves that stunk like skunk cabbage when crushed, is gone, gone, gone. I’m pretty damn proud of myself. My back hates me and is plotting revenge. Also I’m sure despite the vigorous scrubbing up at the sink, followed by a long hot shower I’m going to wake up tomorrow with a whopping case of poison ivy. I don’t care. When I recover enough to get outside again there’s goodies waiting. Tonight Mike got home early and I made him take me back up to Lowe’s. An even dozen new pots of phlox and a half dozen pots of Creeping Jenny came home with me. In they will go the first chance I get. This time next year that road edge slope is going to be a gorgeous crazy quilt of blooming groundcover plants. And I’ll be able to look on it with pride. I did it all with my own hands. The wracked back and the poison ivy rash will be totally worth it. All these years I thought I was an uptown girl. Flowers came from florists. Veggies came from Shoprite. I could mow a lawn, but that was about it. Even my houseplants were silk. I didn’t do dirt, you know? This gardening thing has been an amazing revelation. That I get such satisfaction from grubbing around getting filthy and am willing to drive myself into back spasms just so I can makeover a patch of ground! Who knew? Not me. But I love it. I love sweating and weeding and digging and all the rest of it. Gardening makes me happy. Now if only my back would get with the program life would be perfect. ~LA
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