Tsk, Tsk

Sometimes my regular customers whose gardens I care for each week really push it to the limit as far as the things they ask me to do.

One person I usually let get away with this is The Little Old Lady. She has been my customer and friend for about 10 years now, and now that she is pushing 90, there isn’t a lot she can still do around the yard. But MAN can that woman boss!

My hubby, Willis, jokes that the night before I come over, she gets together on her splendid little screened porch with her friends from the retirement community and they all have a few cocktails and dream up things for me to do that are a little out there. He thinks the conversation goes something like this:

Friend in wheelchair: “Make her move that big bird feeder that hangs from that high branch in the Willow tree. I’ll bet you my yarn collection she will have to climb the tree to get that done, because you only have that little stepladder.”

Friend with Alzheimer’s: “Good one! Hey. Call me in the morning to remind me so I can watch from the back window.”

Yesterday I was asked to move an old pile of wood from the back yard to the garage. This is the same pile of wood I have personally moved about a dozen times to different locations depending on “where it looks best.”

Grudgingly, and after accomplishing all of the other tasks on the very long list written in the world’s most perfect handwriting, I looked at my watch and realized I was going to have to tackle the woodpile, which was located at the farthest end of the garden behind some tall bushes.

After walking through the bushes a few times carrying several armloads of wood, accumulating scratches on my arms in the process, it occurred to me that a more efficient way to move the pile would be to throw the logs over the fence surrounding the garden and then go get them and bring them to the front. I had been doing this for a while, and was at the point during a mundane task where I let my mind wander to deciding what I might like to have for lunch, when I looked down after picking up a piece of wood off the pile and saw a chubby gray mouse looking back at me.

The moment seems frozen in time, looking back on it, as all traumatic moments are. I looked at the mouse and then I screamed and accidentally dropped the big log on his head. I was instantly horrified, due to the fact that I am opposed to killing of any kind and am the type of person that gets made fun of for capturing spiders I find in the house and releasing them outside unharmed.

Not wanting to pick up the weapon of death to check the status of the mouse. (The half of his body that was showing wasn’t moving.) I walked back to the garage to confront my abuser.

“What was all that ruckus back there.” She asked.

“I think I accidentally killed a mouse,” I said.

“Good,” she replied. She hates all kinds of varmints.

“I don’t think I can go back there.” I said sheepishly.

Then she made that little sound with her tongue on the roof of the mouth that my dad made when I was little that said: “You are really a disappointment to me.”

Then I went home and took a nap and dreamed that the family of the mouse was chasing me in hopes of revenge.

Let's Share

I was reading today in my new book Blogging for Dummies, which I purchased using my birthday gift card from my good buddy Joan, that the way to get readers to leave comments is to “inspire” them. Being from a family that loves to shop, I had an idea. Let’s all tell each other about a cool new product that we found that has been very useful to us. Then we can learn about everyone else’s favorite product and other people will be writing things and that will give me time to work on the horrendous project my zany brother Joe gave me to diagram complex sentences for some artsy thing he is working on.

Because bribes have been a useful tool to me so far in my life, I am going to continue the trend and give the person who reports on the item my blog administrator Amy finds the most useful a $10 Walmart gift card just to get on my husband’s nerves because he hates Walmart and all it represents.

O.K. so here we go: My favorite new product are are the little single fertilizing packets made by Miracle Gro. They are these great little tubes which probably get low marks from my family in Colorado who are into the Green movement because they probably hate the waste of all the packaging and they would never dream of fertilizing with anything chemical, but I have a business to run and my busy clients, who don’t even have time to plant their own garden containers, certainly appreciate these things. You can pick up a bag of about 20 at Walmart or somewhere similar for under $10. If you dump one into the watering can twice a week, your containers will look very lush and colorful. Especially if I planted them in the first place☺

WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!?

One of my new garden-design clients just got divorced and purchased a really ugly fixer-upper because his wife got the house. He asked me to stop by and walk around and then let him know what I thought could be done with the landscaping.

When I called, I said: "So, what were you thinking?" meaning, "what area are you thinking you might like to tackle first," but the poor guy took it like, "What WERE you THINKING!" as in, "What could have possessed you to buy this ugly house?"

He said: "Well, I think it has a lot of potential." and then I realized what had happened and I was like: "Oh, no, I didn't mean it like that. I'm a big fan of the fixer-upper!"

Fortunately he understood. I am such a dork.