Sometimes I lose my mind.  I try to blame it on my medications (as you’ll remember if you have been following along) but sometimes I am just stupid.  Take Monday for instance.  It was a pretty day.  The sun was shining for a change.  The temperature was in the mid-seventies.  After lunch I mention to my husband that we should go to Lowe’s and buy some flowers to put out in the beds.  Now we always put flowers out in the spring. It’s just that by we, I mean someone we hire.  This year (thanks W.) we is me and my daughter.  I am very thankful that she is home from California and can help or else the front yard wouldn’t be done…and it is. 

All of the spring flowers, daffodils, tulips, hyacinth, and so on were cut back.  The flower beds were weeded out and zinnias were put in the front bed.  In the center flower bed zinnias and stargazer lillies surround the birdbath, and to the side of the front porch we are placing a hydrangea.  Sounds lovely doesn’t it?  We used a tool to plant the zinnias that can dig holes from a standing position to the appropriate depth for whatever bloom you happen to be planting.  No it’s not magic…it’s marked on the side of the tool.  I thought this was great as I tore out chunks of earth to plop zinnias in.  The problem occurred when I had to bend to place each individual plant in the hole and then cover it’s precious little root system with dirt.  I had purchased 54 zinnias.  That’s a lot of bending and stopping and plopping and covering.  Mid-seventies gets hot when you are overweight and exerting yourself.  I got a migraine.  I went in to take Maxalt, shower and call it a day.  I knew the plants would be waiting for me. 

The second day (today) I thought I was being smarter.  I had my daughter work the hole digger and I just sat and plopped.  That worked pretty well for the first 8 plants, but after that I left the holes and the plants to her.  I retreated to the shade of the porch and repotted the house plants that were root bound.  Then I did clean up of the yard waste.  I thought we were through.  I picked up some shock to clean the pool and grabbed some chlorine tablets and headed to the back yard.  My twenty-three year old daughter heads back with me to help.  Great!  I never get help…I open the bags of shock and she heads off to dump the contents in the pool.  I make the comment that we need to have the back yard cleaned up by The Precious’ birthday party which is scheduled for June 13th.  This is where youth trumps good sense.  “I’ll get the hedge trimmers and you grab the weed spray and we can get some of this done tonight.”  She heads off with her hair up in a cute little knot, shorts and tee, just as cute as a bug and begins to lop the hedges.  Now, how do you call it quits when you are faced with that. 

I grab the weed spray and begin to look for weeds.  I find them.  They are the back yard.  I am definitely going to need more spray.  I begin spraying, hoping that my weak right arm will hold out while I pull the trigger on the sprayer.  I find a thorn tree growing beneath the kitchen window.  It is so large I fear it has its own zip code.  I spray it.  It laughs.  I spray it again.  It spits the spray back out at me and grows another six inches.  I reach down to try and pull it up.  I truly believe that its root system extends beneath the patio…perhaps even the pool.  I fear that continued pulling will not only kill the weed it may collapse the pool.  I give. 

Earlier this evening, Boppy was gathering crap that needed to be hauled off and putting it in one place so that the guy with the truck could do his job.  While doing so he found a snake.  In the backyard.  The backyard that I am now working in.  Don’t think I don’t remember this as I am spraying.  I spray the yard, literally and liberally.  I look beneath the bench between pool and the basketball court and there are a ton of weeds hiding there.  I don’t know what kind of plant these weeds are but they have a shallow root system and a broad span of greenery.  It would really be easier to just reach down and pull them out of the ground.  To do so would require me to reach under the bench in the quasi-dark, in a yard where a reddish, brown snake was found earlier this afternoon.  Hmmm…what to do. Yes, I am prone to chickening out but,  I got down on my hands and knees and began to pull.  I nearly had a run away when I found a piece of gray rope.  I jumped when some type of cable became dislodged and hit my hand.  But by now I had my big girl panties on and nothing was stopping me.  Until the biggest ‘effing frog I have ever seen in my life jumped out from under the bench and onto my arm just before he took a nosedive into the pool I did ugly things to monkeys, challenged the validity of the frog’s parents marriage at the time of his birth, and peed my pants a little (and that was supposed to have been fixed!).  I looked over at my daughter to see what effect my outburst had on her and she was happily trimming the hedges.  She was digging around beneath the plants, and pulling out dead branches from under massive piles of dead under growth.  She didn’t even seem to be aware that snakes could be lurking in the shadows.  She was oblivious to the spiders that nest in the dark.  She was happily playing in the dirt…a little girl again.

I still can learn things from my children.  I can find new foods.  I can be taught short cuts.  I can find the joy in gardening.  Well, two out of three ain’t bad.  I used to enjoy gardening.  I really did.  When we first bought this house I spent hours planting in the spring.  I used Miracle Gro like I owned stock in the company.  I watered, I weeded, I did everything I had ever read was the right thing to do if you wanted a successful flower garden.  Year after year I was rewarded with impatiens that were larger and fuller than any others on the block.  I personally landscaped the back yard without ever thinking about what might be lying in wait.  Then my diseases took over.  It quickly became to painful to bend and kneel and do all of the things that gardening takes.  It’s nice to know, though, that someone in the family enjoys it.  I sincerely hope that her joints don’t fail her…or her fears overcome her.  I have tried to raise children who could face anything life could throw at them…but how can they trust someone who shrieks at snakes and curses frogs?  Oh well, at least the front yard is done, and the back doesn’t have to be done for another three weeks.  Hopefully none of the crap I pulled tonight will grow back, and all of the creepy crawlies will  have been warned by the alarm I sounded tonight and move far, far, away.  Yes, I know…but don’t pick at it.  It’s fragile.

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