Adventures in Gardening, Pt. 357

The convergence of

• An actual sunny day
• the return of my energy (can I get a whoo-hoo?)
• the overwhelming amount of weeds in my yard

led to my determining to do some serious weed-whacking this afternoon. I got home from work, changed into scroungy gardening shorts, liberally sprayed myself down with Botanical OFF! and drug the super-long weatherproof extension cord up from the basement. I plugged in ye olde whacker and got to work. Approximately 3 minutes in I ran out of string. Feck. But I was already committed to the whole project, and I was also covered in OFF! which kind of means I just wasted a whole shower unless I do some serious garden work - so I decided to run to the Home Depot and get some replacement string. There you have it, scroungy shorts, OFF!-stink and all, I made my way there. I found the replacement string, bought it and returned home. No harm no foul, right? Wrong. I go to change the string and see that actually I had plenty of string left on my original spool, it had just come un-strung somehow. Feck.

On the bright side - I now have plenty of replacement string, with the added bonus of taking myself out in public looking like a hot mess, which is always fun.

OK whatever, it’s fecking gorgeous here, nothing can foul my mood. So I get back to whacking. Now, here’s the thing. I planted peony bulbs last April. That’s more than a year ago, for those who can’t calendar. Last year they didn’t do anything, but this year three of them came up. Peonies grow slooooooooowly. Two of them have one stalk of green and the other one has two stalks of green and also developed a bud a few weeks ago.

Every day I would go out and check to see if the bud was blossoming, but nooooo, nothing. Every day I would drive back and forth from work, seeing these giant heavily-laden peony bushes all over the place, and all I have is a couple of sprigs and a bud. Then the day before yesterday - it blossomed. And it’s truly gorgeous, almost worth the wait. So in my usual careful manner I was whacking weeds near the peony stalks and whacked one of them off completely, right to the ground. “Feck!” says I. “Well, at least it wasn’t the one with the flower. I will have to be more careful!” then I turned around and cunningly whacked that one to the ground too.

One time I had my horoscope done and in the midst of a lot of other unflattering accuracies it stated that I had a very “unstable” personal energy. This is an example of that, in my opinion. Me and my unstable personal energy. Puppy-like, but not in a cute way. In the way that always ends up with mud on someone’s pant leg.

Oh well. Since my hormones have re-balanced I found it funny and ridiculous rather than either tragic or infuriating. Hopefully they will grow back, sloooooowly or not. And now I get to have the pretty flower inside in a vase - see how delightful to gaze upon it is? (It’s the big fluffy pink one, not the knobbly green thing. That’s an avocado.)

Now I go to shower off all of this OFF!

And it’s the desperation to hold on to
Something that can’t be held on to
So, don’t waste your time filling up my words
Don’t tell me why, assume the worst.

I don’t need to need you
Tell me what to do
Tell me what to say

Don’t you wanna help me?
Tell me what to do
Help me find a way

Hopefully, you make no mistake
If you learn from what you‘ve got to take
Good or bad, it‘s all gonna add up in the end but,
You can never win.

Don‘t thank me,
Don‘t tell me how,
Don‘t break me down,
Don‘t help me make it,

I don‘t need to need you
Tell me what to do
Tell me what to say

- Fischerspooner, Never Win