I haven’t found someone to do the hand-weeding yet. I’m not sure if it’s genuinely too late in the season to schedule such things, or if I’m scaring people off by explaining why I’m not doing it myself.
It’s not that I’m embarrassed about it and want reassurance.
Okay, I’m probably lying. Neither my husband nor I are comfortable hiring people to do things for us, even when reality puts up a billboard questioning our sanity. He grew up actively avoiding yardwork, whereas I was prohibited from using anything that could be considered “dangerous.” The quotes are intentional because ‘dangerous’ was being scoped by people who were religiously opposed to babyproofing.1 For example, it was my job to remove dead vermin from sprung mousetraps, but I wasn’t allowed to set the traps. I was also tasked with cleaning wire tangles and removing pulped frog skeletons from the lawn mower that I wasn’t permitted to operate.
To be fair, the one and only time I used a riding lawnmower, I did take out a fence, and I’ve had some ah, weird bicycle accidents.
I haven’t ridden a bike, except for a stationary one in a gym, since one sunny morning in 1994. I was running late for work on the Mizzou Campus, cutting across the brick plaza beside Ellis Library, when my bike suddenly stopped moving. I went flying into one of the trees that used to be in the concrete planters there. I’m fuzzy on how I got from being sprawled upside down against the tree to collecting my bike and walking it to work, but I do remember locking it in the rack outside Townshend Hall and Leaving It There to Die Or Be Impounded To A Good Home.
Oh, sure, it wasn’t the bike’s fault, just like it wasn’t to blame for me a) crashing into the trunk of a parked car after being surprised by a dog lunging for my back tire, b) cracking my wrist by grabbing one of the iron fences on the edge of the Stephens College campus while I was speeding downhill and realized I couldn’t stop before hitting the intersection with Broadway, or c) snapping my helmet in two when I miscalculated a turn while riding down one of the ramps at Brady Commons.
That said, though, our relationship was clearly cursed, so it had to end.
I’ve gotten a lot of recommendations to try Ivy Block or IvyX, so I’m going to give that a whirl before giving up on outdoor gardening entirely.
What’s one more layer of protection that I didn’t seem to need when I was a kid?
- Instead of moving the laundry detergent out from under the bathroom sink the first time I drank Downy as a toddler, or the second time, or possibly the third time, my mother and grandmother chose to keep the stuff there so I could eventually learn my lesson by trying to wash my hair with Woolite. I got it into my eyes, wasn’t happy about that, and started avoiding everything under the sink, including the apparently tasty tasty Downy. As a side bonus, I wasn’t blinded, and I survived to teach my sister that she needed to Not Do What I Did WITHOUT THINKING SHE JUST HAD TO LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE.
Why yes, I’m Gen X. How did you guess? ↩︎
Modus Dementi 