Gardening in the Rain

Mom gave me over a hundred flower bulbs. It was time to replace her tulips, so of course she ordered enough bulbs to populate the Netherlands. My mother is a generous person. She felt I needed about a hundred of them.

Thanks, Mom.

So, there I was with a big crate of every kind of bulb I ever wanted to plant and no time to do it. My plan was to have them in the ground by mid-October. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men . . .

October came and went. As from my former post, you remember what happens when you wait too late in the state of Illinois to do an outdoor project. I still have frostbite on my ass from that one.

The problem was more than time. The summer had been hot and dry, and the ground had been baked to a brick-like consistency. So, I needed to wait for a little rain.

A little rain.

It was too cold the day I cleaned the flue on the roof. It was too cold and icy to do much at all. I needed to wait. Hey, the weather man said it would warm up. He also said it would rain almost non-stop.

Like without stopping.

But Mom had given me a crate of expensive bulbs. Before the bulbs could go in, I had to take out the tomato beds. The wood was rotting. The beds were full of fungus from the wet spring, the kind that infests tomato plants and makes them die. So no tomatoes could be planted there again. So they had to come out.

When I put them in a few years back, I put in a potent mix of well over 2000 lbs of organic materials to grow my lovely veggies. Each year before planting, I mixed in another 250-500 lbs. I figured, after some run-off and whatnot, there was probably still 2500 lbs of soil to move. Removing the rotting wood took little effort. One sharp whack with a hammer and the wood falls away.

Yesterday dawned drearily, but the rain had stopped. It wasn’t a heavy rain all week. It was a drippy, drizzly rain that soaked into the bones, but not the kind that fully saturates the ground. It does, however, soften it enough to actually drive a spade into it without killing oneself.

So, yesterday I started. I knocked down one box, carted the soil away—a wheelbarrow at a time—and worked the area, put in 28 bulbs in the cold wind and quit. It was too chilly, too windy to carry on.

Which meant my extra day off was going to be hell. I needed to cart off another 1500 lbs of dirt, break down the box, put in two more tulip beds and a bed of annis, various hyacinth, daffodils and whatever else was in the crate.

Then get Christmas lights down from the attic, string them up, put up the deer and other display lights. So much for reading that book I have sitting on the table. Sigh.

The wheelbarrow is rickety. It’s only 30 years old. The ground is wet. No, it’s a slog of mud. The grass is wetter. The mud is slick. The shovelfuls are heavy.

I was on my fourth load in the wheelbarrow. I was moving the soil to various low spots—anywhere where I could get rid of it. That’s a lot of dirt to dispose of, but I was determined.

My muscles screamed, still sore from the day before. My back was telling me no more. My boots were soaked through and heavy with thick globs of mud and wet leaves. It was like carrying around 10 lbs of cement on my feet, and my feet were freezing.

The fourth load was especially heavy. For some reason, I failed to remember how rickety the wheelbarrow was. So, I was moving the load, moving fast because it was heavy.

The handle snapped off at the base. It sheered away under a couple hundred pounds of muddy garden mix. The other handle was intact, so the barrel immediately listed sideways, causing me to over-correct, which caused the barrel to drop to the ground at a dead stop.

I failed to stop. I failed to stop when my pelvic bone came into contact with the lip of the barrel. I failed to stop when I went down into the mud in the bowl. Ah, I just love the flavor of organic, composted shit in the morning.

So, wiped the mud from my face, spit out a mouthful of sphagnum and manure laced with vermiculite, and crippled the barrel over to my next dump spot.

Time for a break.

I hate my neighbor. He said, “Hey, why didn’t you come get me? I would have used my in-loader to move all that for you.

Yeah, I hate him and his kind offer. I guess my deer-in-the-headlights look with black mud streaking my face and hair, not to mention the copious amounts coating my clothes and boots, must have been comical. He launched into a belly laugh that would make Merry Ol’ St. Nick envious.

“Too late?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

I was done moving dirt, so it was time to plant. Bulb diggers are fabulous tools. I highly recommend them to anyone who wants to plant bulbs. You plunge them into the soil, twist, pull, and you have a perfect hole.

I recommend you spend more than a two dollars like I did. On my second row of bulbs, the digger split down the middle, flew apart and sent me face first into the freshly turned mud.

Yummy.

This time, it went up my nose. Not to worry. I always carry tissues when digging in the mud on cold, rainy days.

Yes, it started raining again. Lovely. Four tissues later, I pieced the cheap POS back together and went back to planting. The dog was howling. She hates rain. She wanted in the house, her little body shivering while her cute button eyes looked at me with an expression pure hatred. On my feet again, over to the door, let the dog in.

I noticed every time I knelt and climbed back up; it was becoming more difficult. Each movement elicited old lady grunts from my throat; each reach, a groan.

I sneezed out another load of mud.

When the large tulip bed was finally finished, the neighbor yelled over to ask if I wanted him to send over his boys to help. These are great boys. They are everything true boys should be, but I couldn’t stand the thought of mud balls decorating my siding, so I declined.

On to the next flower bed. It was on the south side of the house, so I figured I would catch less of the breeze. I was soaked to the skin, my hair clinging to my muddy face and neck. It kept getting into my eyes, so I brushed it back with muddy gloves.

Oh, hell. Who cares at this point?

The drizzle stopped. For like a minute. Then it rained. It really rained. Like a downpour. I didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Nothing was going to stop me from planting all those daffodils, tulips, annis, crocuses and hyacinths. I shall be victorious!

The neighbor on the south side pulled in. Upon seeing the broken wheelbarrow lying on its side like a beached whale, he offered me his. His response was my turning my mud-covered face in his general direction and offering him a sneer.

I can still hear him laughing. He started laughing as he walked away. He laughed as he entered his garage and closed the door. He was still laughing so loudly when he entered his house that I could hear him in my yard. He’s still chuckling. I hear it now.

Finally, with all the daffodils, hyacinth and crocuses in, it was time to move to the big garden in the front yard. I’d dumped a lot of dirt there. So, off I trudged with my crate of bulbs, my mud-caked cell phone, and equally muddy mini-speaker, and headed that way. On the wet, muddy oak leaves scattered over the wet, muddy grass. I’m not sure I even managed to find all the bulbs that flew through the air with the greatest of ease when my feet took wing and escaped from gravity. The back of my head landed in the freshly turned mud, causing four bulbs to squeeze out of the ground like toothpaste from a tube.

Come to think of it, that might be why the neighbor is still laughing.

Anyway, I hauled my wet, muddy ass up, picked up the crate, hurled into the driveway with all my failing strength, threw the spade like a javelin, embedding it in the ground more than 40 feet away, kicked the crippled wheelbarrow, possibly broke a toe and set a new record in colorful curses that ranged in the realm of multilingual. My Cherokee grandmother would be so mortified.

With renewed hatred for the task I had taken on, like a woman possessed, I dug what I could find of the numerous bulbs from the wet grass and leaves, marched to the last of the flowerbeds, dug so hard mud was slung into the street and shoved those accursed bulbs into place. I was done.

I also managed to get one lighted decoration from the attic when I discovered I could no longer climb the ladder or pull any heavy boxes down. It was all I had to give. I was so far past done.

Now there’s a trail of mud—and a little blood—blazed through the house, and the water heater is out of hot water, I feel like I was trampled by a herd of moose. It’s not an ache, exactly. It’s more like a burning, blazing fire through every fiber of muscles in my body. My joints won’t bend properly, and there’s a distinct possibly I may have cracked my coccyx.

Those blessed flowers had better be worth it, and spring had better bring plenty of colors.

Of Dust Bunnies and Other Domestic Horrors.

The plight of a working mother with two jobs is made worse with a choice. The choice was, do I continue writing, or give it up to be a better housekeeper, a better mother, a better wife. I gave it up—for almost a week. I found out I’m a better wife and mother if I can exercise my craft. I write, therefore, I am.

But that says nothing for my housekeeping. With only so many hours in the day—and night—something gets left out. Let’s face it, would anyone rather do housework than anything else in the world, say, even a root canal?

Each week, I squeeze out an hour or two to run the sweeper, man a dust rag and toss a few things in the laundry (only what’s absolutely needed to dress myself or my child) and spend the rest of the time in pursuit of the creative. Everything changes. Some changes are good.

Recently my day job offered the opportunity to work from home. I thought it over for a long time. It’s a lot to consider. Do I wish to always be in my own home, to never leave during the daylight hours, to not have coworkers surrounding me and laughing? As it turned out, I decided I could live with it. It was the advent of winter that sealed the deal. The thought of my pretty red sporty car on the snow and ice was enough to scare my hair white.

The things you discover when you’re in your own home twenty-four hours a day are mind-boggling. One of those things is that the housekeeping gene in my family is dominant. I thought it had skipped my generation. I thought it might actually be a disease that only affects those in my family such as my grandmother and my mother. We suffered through a childhood of demands, such as, “Pick up your shoes,” “Clean your room,” “Your turn to do dishes,” and “Is this where you found it? Clean up this mess!”

I now hear those words flying from my own mouth. I swore it wouldn’t happen, but it’s happening. The twelve-year-old princess is finding out what it’s like to live with a stay-at-home mom. I don’t think she’s pleased. Those chores do pile up.

For the first few weeks at home I tried to turn a blind eye. Then it hit me all at once. I’ve lost control of my life. There are things in my house that I’m ashamed of, other things I cannot find, and still other things so disorganized I cannot figure them out.

Then the new year hit. The Christmas decorations were stored away for another year and the place looked like a warmed-over version of hell. Still, I tried to ignore it. Nagging feelings of total chaos danced in my head. It even got to the point where I could no longer write. It’s too much chaos!

Things had to change, so, New Year’s resolutions:

1.       Clean this Mother Hubbard (censored expletive) of a house.

2.       Be kinder to myself and others.

3.       Wrestle back control of my life.

It came to a head one day while working at my day-job. I work for a call center, answer questions for those who call in and ask. There is no room for errors. So, as I researched the needed information, I was brutally attacked. That’s right, attacked. A small horde of vicious dust bunnies took flight and went for my eyes. Thinking fast, I put my caller on hold and went on the defensive, swatting and swinging until the nasty creatures were subdued.

After the call, I took my break and went on the hunt for that horrifying, unnatural being known as the domestic dust bunny. It was the dog who had flushed them from their hiding places. The evidence was quite literally written on her poor face in the form of fuzzy gray balls of fluff. She looked confused, upset and not a little terrified. Something had to be done. The malicious creatures had taken on life and were stealing the dog’s food and socks from the laundry monster. Unbelievable.

I was on a mission. Over the next few days I tore into each room, tracking and hunting, evicting spiders along the way as I sought out self-animated and self-aware dust bunnies. It was in the man cave where I found the breeding ground. I was at war and the stakes were high. At one point I even thought about using my husband’s old shotgun. I won’t tell you what I did about the thought, but the husband was not amused. The most difficult part was patching the holes in the floor, walls and door.

They’re all gone now.

Still, there were my goals for this year. There are things that stand in the way of such lofty goals—things such as the laundry monster and the mail beast.

The laundry monster is pretty well self-explanatory. We’ve all experienced such creations of our own making. The pile grows higher and higher until an avalanche threatens to destroy lives. After getting the many missing socks from the now-vanquished dust bunnies, the pile grew higher. I started on it straight away.

What to do while waiting for the laundry was to tackle the mail beast. This creature is a bit more rare. We don’t throw out our junk mail. We don’t have a shredder, but we have a fireplace. One does not fire up the fireplace in the heat of the summer, so one stores the mail until such time as a fire is feasible.

By that time, feasibility of a fire was not an issue. The mail beast was. It was too large to tackle. It was spreading its piles across the counters, reproducing asexually and making a bid for world domination. Cooking meals was becoming risky.

You see, it wasn’t a matter of scooping it off the counter and making trips to the fireplace. The problem was it wasn’t all junk mail. There were needed documents in the beast, documents that weren’t a priority, but needed to be sorted from the belly of the beast and filed away. Daunting at best.

So, while the laundry was going, and the dust was settling, the mail had to be sorted. I was well through it all, had most of it sorted into piles according to subject or into the flames when I ran across something startling—a letter from one of my best friends. It was dated July, 2013.

Chaos ensued and won the day while I stopped to read the coveted, rare, hand-written, post-marked letter. When was the last time you got such a rare treat? I nearly did a jig of joy. (Okay, I did the dance since no one was looking.)

The mail beast was left in its sorted piles while I answered the letter with five rambling pages of hand-written silliness. It had to be answered immediately. It had waited for an answer for six months.

The letter is now in the mail and when I glanced over, I saw that the beast was once more trying to retake it’s former shape, although much reduced in size. Meh, I’ll worry about it tomorrow.