True confession: my front yard kind-of looks like a jungle. Well, not the lawn -- Ben keeps that mowed pretty regularly. But the flowerbeds are pretty bad, to put it mildly.
Thing is, I hate weeding flower gardens to begin with. I don't like caring for flowers. I'm good in the backyard, with the vegetable garden. Pardon the pun, but I actually get something out of it, and am able to enjoy the "fruits" (or vegetables) of my labors. With flowers, they look pretty for a week, and then they die. It's not a whole lot of motivation to keep it nice.
And so I drag my feet on doing it.
On top of that, it's been pretty hot, and for a pregnant woman to sit outside in direct sunlight in the middle of the hot summer and do something she already strongly dislikes, well, it just doesn't top my priority list. Especially when you consider that I have to wear gardening gloves, which heats me up even more. Truthfully, the last time the front garden was really weeded was the second week of June, when I was at Girls' Camp, and Ben was overachieving at home as a single dad.
The second week of June. Yeah. I know. I'm pathetic.
When it does cool off enough to work outside, it's either about to let loose a thunderstorm, or it's nearly midnight. Neither of those are prime times for working outdoors. Finally, it's starting to cool off enough during the day that I can tolerate being out there for more than 10 minutes at a time, and so I'm doing a little bit each day to uncover the ground again.
Today I spent about an hour and a half outside. My beautiful hydrangea, that I always get lots of compliments on, due to its gorgeous periwinkle hues, is now quite homely. The flowers were still fading, so it probably wasn't
quite time to prune it yet, but it was pretty huge and I needed to work around and under it. So it's resembling something out of Charlie Brown now.
Thing is, when your weeds get as long as mine are, you uncover all sorts of things beneath them. Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't find any rodents hiding beneath the foliage. The things I did find, however, were quite unhappy at having their habitats disturbed, and they took it out on me. When I could, I came out victorious (like the two worms I threw into the grass, along with a slug), but the creatures out there today really put up a fight.
At one point, I saw a long and leggy reddish-brown ...thing... that moved super fast. It was almost two inches long, and honestly, if I'd tried to catch it, I wouldn't have been able to -- it was way too fast. Fortunately, it was moving away from me, deeper into the abyss.
A minute or two later, something else came at me fast. It was shorter and wider, and only had six legs. It was a beetle of some kind, and unfortunately for me, it resembled a small roach. Roaches (I shudder just typing the word...literally) are the only thing of which I have a true phobia. Luckily, it changed its course and also went farther into the deep.
A minute after that, I saw a slug, about three inches long. It was moving faster than a slug should be able to, but still slow enough to catch. I took my little spade, scooped it up, and tossed it out onto the grass, and least eight feet away from where I was sitting. I poked around the area a little bit to see if anything else dared come out.
Nothing.
I got comfortable. Things were good for the next 20 minutes or so. I finished the area I was working in, and moved over a little closer to the wall of the house. As I pulled up another weed, something came out and started up the wall. I think it must have been the younger brother of the first ...thing... because it looked just like it, but wasn't quite as long. I had it cornered this time, though. It was climbing up the brick, and I had a spade in my hand. I ruthlessly attacked it, and I won.
As I was double checking that pieces of it weren't still squirming where they feel into the freshly turned-up dirt, something big and black flew at my head. Yes...flew. I flinched. It went behind me, but I couldn't see where. I didn't know if it went in to the hydrangea, the ends of which were gently poking into my back, or if it had landed on my back, or if it had just gone on.
While I was distracted looking for this big black thing, I felt something cold and wettish on my knee. Normally if I feel a tickle, I just brush it away or assume it's the tip of a too-tall weed. But this was cold and damp...different. I looked over, and there's a slug on me.
Fan-freaking-tastic.
Yeah, I screamed like a little girl. I'm glad I was wearing gloves, because I was able to brush it off without actually touching it, or without attacking myself with the spade. After I got it off, I scooped it up and threw it out to find the other slug. Honestly, I don't have a clue how it got on my knee -- it had to have dropped, but the plant that was next to my knee was pretty brittle...I'd be surprised if it could have climbed up the plant. But it's no wonder that it fell,
Or did it jump onto me?
I think I'll go take a shower now.
