Monday, April 2

Almost Productive

"Now that fear of yours makes more sense."
-Zorak, to me, as I lay sprawled out on the ground today in the melon patch.

I'm just not cut out for things that require coordination. Simple tasks, such as baking, installing brake pads, or chasing herds of small children, I can do. The more complex tasks, like, say, pulling weeds while keeping my balance, will do. me. in. I had a good one, too. I pulled and yanked and hauled. I braced my feet and bent my legs. Perhaps that was my undoing, because no sooner had I thought "It's coming up! It's coming up!" than I began to lean and twist and slide... in slow-motion, too. Up, up, aaaannnnnd, OVER. Face first into the freshly turned dirt in the middle of the patch.

And my brain, ever ready to defend me and prove that I am fit to survive, warned me that I was about to impale myself on a sapling stump on the way down. Wasn't that nice? Of course, did it also send the message to LET GO of the rooted devil plant that was taking me down? No. No, it did not. Evidently, my ever ready brain is only wired for one signal at a time. Thank God we don't have tigers here.

And when I landed on my side, with a most satisfying thud, I looked up, laughing, at Zorak, who looked either bewildered or concerned. And that was when he, oh so eloquently, referenced my big hairy fear of malevolent vines creeping in to kill us while we sleep. I would like to get offended and huffy over it, but it was funny, that was a stoopid thing to do (on my part, not his), and really, I'm just glad he understands me a little better now. I'm also glad we're a family that can laugh at ourselves (and, obviously, each other). That we can have fun doing what we do.

And we worked today. We worked hard. We dug half a dozen tree stumps out of the melon patch, and easily ten old railroad ties. Some of the trees had grown up through the wood. That was wild. The melon patch (13'8" x 22') is now ready for a border and compost.

If I've learned nothing else in this adventure, it's that landscaping should be kept simple. Sure, those trellised wisteria vines looked great behind three tiers of monkey grass and blackberry bushes. And yes, the whatzits definitely set off the dogwoods -- back when they weren't 30 feet tall. If the next people who own your home don't happen to have the Better Homes and Gardens Gene, well, a decade can make for some pretty nasty wrangling for the ones who follow after that. So we're learning to keep it simple and easy to maintain.

Well, that, and "let go" when you're going down.

Never stop learning!

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

6 comments:

Melora said...

Yowch. Clever of you to land on nicely tilled soil instead of a stump. I guess one of the pluses of digging alone is that no one sees me falling on my fanny. That is a nice big melon patch! T. and K. wanted watermelons, but I thought one type of enormous vine (they'd already bought pumpkin seeds) was enough for our first year.
Taming your garden-gone-wild must be a challenge, but I would love to have some cool old plants to rescue. Our property came with lots of enormous trees but only two (unattractive) shrubs. I would love some wisteria!

Laura said...

Yeah, back in the 70's monkey grass, railroad ties, and wisteria were popular. Our house in North Carolina had exactly what you're describing! But it also had lots of blue hydrangea bushes, dogwoods, azaleas, forsythia bushes, and lantana and irises. And daylilies and daffodils. Some previous owner had put lots of money into bulbs and perennials and flowering trees and shrubs. Years later we were the grateful recipients of all that beauty. (And gardenias - lots of gardenias...)

Dy said...

Oh, yes, the bulbs, too. We have daffodils and tulips, plus two (possibly three) other as-yet-to-be-identified bulbs. I thought we had maybe 15-20 dogwoods, but it looks like we're closer to 30+, and the other decorative flowering things... Old Mrs. Cook really must have made this her own little Garden of Eden. I can only imagine what it cost to put all this stuff in! Wow.

Oh, but it's pretty. Just needs a little streamlining to thrive for this garden-hampered family. :-) Still and all, I think we'll do better than the interim owners. :-O (Oh, my!)

Melora, big vines. Lots of room. I'm thankful we can do it. May not be so enthusiastic come August, when it's hot and we have to go battle the critters, but for now, it's exciting. Will wisteria survive being shipped? I could send you all sorts of things from here! :-)

Dy

Dy

Kathy Jo DeVore said...

My nickname growing up was Grace, because of my lack of it. :} Glad you missed the stump!

Amber said...

Wow, how exciting, a melon patch! I'm so looking forward to putting in stuff like that in a couple years. First though we need to get through this minor issue of a house to live in. :-)

Your story reminds me of something that happened to me when I was in high school. I was cleaning out my parent's pool with a long handled scrub brush and I was leaning waaay over trying to exert maximum pressure on the brush so I could get the gunk off. Of course, I leaned just a little bit too far or put a little too much pressure on the brush and I fell in head first. Wow, that was cold! My family still laughs about that story. The worst of it is that it wasn't the only time it happened - although after that I was smart enough to wear a bathing suit whenever I went out to scrub the pool. :-)

Becca said...

Living in the arid West, it's hard to imagine jungly overgrowth like that. But it's must be nice to have something to work with. When we moved into our first little house, the previous owners lived there for 19 years and didn't plant one single anything. Not one shrub, tree, or perennial ANYWHERE. How can people live like that?