Thursday, June 18, 2009

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.


7 comments:

M said...

Dude.

You remember that scene from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets with the giant spiders?

I CRIED when I saw that for the first time because it freaked me out. CRIED, I tell you.

I still have nightmares sometimes about Insects/Arachnids of Unusual Size...and it's always with those giant pincers...and I'm getting all creeped out! I'm going to go shower.

Pickles and Dimes said...

OH, I love weeding too! It is wonderful: being outside, clearing space that once was a tangled mess of cruddy weeds, getting your hands dirty. Nirvana.

I don't, however, like the giant weeds. Why are they always super prickly??? Even if you're wearing gloves??

artemisia said...

I do not find weeding to be lethargic. Which surprises me, because I love, love any other kind of activity that is, as you say, "picking." I, too, would love to whack ice off of things on which it does not belong.

But, weeding. I can't get past the bugs and dirt. AND THE ITCHINESS. Oh, it just makes me so itchy.

Maybe I will give it another try. Instead of focusing on the itchy I can focus on the DECLUTTERING aspect of it all.

Anonymous said...

I love weeding too, because of the picking and removing factor, and also because it's almost immediate gratification. You pull a weed, and it's gone and that little piece of lawn is perfect, even if just for a minute until another weed pops up in its place.

I weeded our back beds yesterday and was very happy with it when it was all done. I couldn't believe how tall some of those weeds were. I guess I need to do it more often.

Swistle said...

Hm. I am a peeler/plucker/picker, so maybe I would love weeding! Except for the...*shudder*...bugs.

wandering nana said...

I will not work with spiders, I will not, I can not, I must not. If I do, I will dream all night about them and that honey, aint pretty. I can kill them, but only one at a time. I closed my eyes in Harry Potter and all the other movies that feel the need to show the swarms ( what are hundreds of spiders called anyway?) As I am discussing this I can feel the creepy things, I'm done!

Unknown said...

I used to fine weeding cathartic... until last summer... when there was a snake (smallish, probably non-lethal) lying across the walkway. Spiders I can deal with. Snakes?!? No thanks. I'm too freaked out to weed near anything leafy that can harbor scary snakes. The landscape has suffered because of last year's stupid snake.