Gardens: That was silly

Every now and then, I do something ridiculous that seems like a good idea at the time, but in retrospect was rather silly. Yesterday was one of those occasions. You see, I happen to have a garden in the back of my house. It has some of the usual features of a garden. There is the back deck. There is a fence that is open chain link at the back and wood down the sides. I have a garden along the back fence with shrubs, a large corner flower patch and various planters. There is a side patch with gravel and children's play material. Of course, there is grass. This would seem average, would it not?

The problem with having a garden is that maintenance is required. It is not optional. The lawn needs to be mowed or you have by law harassing you. There is the weed control of the dandelions or you have by laws bothering you about that. The solution would be to turn the lawn into a maintenance free garden but then you will violate the architectural controls of the neighborhood. Yes, if you have a house, they insist that you look after it.

So there it was...the garden. It had weeds and they needed to be dealt with. I had procrastinated the lawn care and garden care for long enough. I got out my tools and the large garbage bag. I started with weeding the back corner and pulled some clover and dandelions from the grass. Then I noticed them. Along the side of the deck were the stinging nettles. Now, with small children running in the back garden, you make the removal of nettles a priority as small fingers and feet shouldn't ever have to come in contact with those weeds. (BTW I don't count the pansies that are running amok under my deck as weeds...they are rogue flowers.) So, I began to pull them with my little tool made for the job. I pulled and pulled and finally finished for all but one. The last one was in a different section of the garden so I reached to grab the bag.

Next time, I am going to look as I do that. I grabbed the largest nettle full force and it told me in no uncertain terms as to how displeased it was about being yanked from the ground. I had lovely welts and blisters all across my left hand. Nor was I wearing those useful things called garden gloves, thinking that looking for the ones I lost would take too much time and would be too much effort. Never again!

All I have to say is that was awesomely silly and I never did pull that last nettle (not to mention the rest of the weeds). And did I mention "OUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!" Lol.