weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeds

Yesterday Chip and I scalped our backyard. Scalped in the form of pulling the Whimsy-height weeds that had grown across the width of it during the month of June. Despite my long sleeves, thick red sweatshirt, dusty black sweats, grimy shoes, the blue rubber-tipped gloves on my hands, and the navy blue bandanna on my head - I felt the creepy-crawlies of bugs. And specifically, SPIDERS. In fact, here is where I tell you my own particular brand of Weird Whimsy Logic: Garden Detail. Pulling lawn weeds is something I actually enjoy. It appeals to my own OCD-loving desire to pulls things, remove things, and generally pick. (Last night as Chip and I were watching Deadliest Catch - and don't tell me that you don't watch that show because I know you do even though we all WONDER why we watch that show about crab fishermen in Alaska - so last night? As we're watching Deadliest Catch, and the deckhands are using sledgehammers to remove the inches of thick ice that has formed on the equipment, the wheelhouse, the other... boaty equipment stuff - Chip turns to me and says, I know you well enough to say that you would LOVE doing that job. It appeals to you. And it did. And it does.)

So weeding? I love lawn weeding. It is picking at its finest. But the converse, the deep garden bed weeding? I hate it. H-A-T-E. HATE. The hate is so fiery because it is not picking. It is pulling everything in sight - and especially because the weeds are all smashed up against one another in a deep weedy jungle mass. The type of weeding we were doing yesterday was the HATE kind. And it was especially HATE heightened due to the sheer behemoth size of those suckers. As tall as me, and taller, is what I'm saying. There is something deeply unnatural about a dandelion that has sprouted into some jack and the beanstalk hairy monster, complete with long spiny leaves the size of a MELON. It's just not right. And the bugs? We were talking about the bugs, weren't we? In weeds that are that freakishly big, I have these deep-seated suspicions that the insects have also partaken of the grow-large Koolaid and are hulking beneath a shady head-sized leaf to leap out at me with their over-sized pincers. Shudder. With every weed I pulled yesterday I waited for one of those skittering hamburger-sized spiders to come up and tap me on the shoulder to say HEY LADY WITH THE NAVY BLUE BANDANNA - YOU ARE DESTROYING MY HOOOOOOOME! AND I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE! SO UNLESS YOU PLAN ON PUTTING UP A NEW CONDO COMPLEX IN THIS HERE WEED PATCH, WE'RE ALL MOVING INTO YOUR HOUSE.

Of course, it didn't happen. The conversation, I mean. Instead it was Chip asking me if I'd seen any of the rodent-sized arachnids. And then he lopped off another tree branch. And I pulled another weed. Until there weren't any more to be found.

Scalped, is what I said.