Plant Assassin
It’s no secret that I have a black thumb, though I come by it honestly. I have one relative who killed a potted cactus by not watering it enough. I have personally failed to get mint to grow, let alone spread. Mostly, plants in my care go gently into that dark night…usually sooner, rather than later.
The one exception to this is weeds. I can grow weeds like nobody’s business. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to grow attractive weeds, and more’s the pity, as the ones I do grow get absolutely enormous.
This is mostly because I’m lazy, rather than any sort of sentimental attachment to my pitiful horticultural achievements. I don’t like to weed, mostly because I know I’m not going to have anything new to put in. And all that work, too, I admit it.
Today, however, was a very good day. Housemate showed me how to use the weed-whacker.
I’ve had the thing for a few years and never learned how to use it, mostly because there were so many other things that were more interesting, like clipping my toenails, or cleaning out the cats’ water dish.
If only I had known.
I came home from work in quite the mood, a good bit of which was hormonal, and some of the rest was just a large collection of minor, work-related annoyances, none of which individually was worth worrying about, but the collection itself was greater than the sum of its parts.
I was in a mood to crush, kill, and destroy. Hence, the weed-whacker.
Ladies and gentlemen, if plants made horror movies, I would be the Freddie Kruger of botanic cinema. The 16′ x 16′ garden plot has been utterly decimated. Baby trees are shattered wrecks in garbage bags. And as I sit here typing, I am covered in tiny flecks of green goo from toes to teeth. (Note to self; keep mouth shut when weed-whacking.) I couldn’t be happier. I have officially moved up from passively allowing plants to die to actively murdering them in their beds.
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May 21st, 2007 at 7:58 pm
One word of advice from the hort-master–please be very cautious in your whackage of random Indiana weeds if you are NOT one who can spot Poison Ivy from 10 feet away. P.I. (if you’re sensitive to it, and really most people are when they’ve been exposed more than once or twice) is bad when you touch it, but it’s far far worse when it’s sprayed in a fine green pulverized mist across your skin and clothing. Wear long pants and boots. Remove clothes inside out and wash promptly.
Just a thought for the day–while I’m very good at spotting poison ivy in even tiny amounts, I am super-paranoid about it when I’m using the string trimmer because the effects can be so devastating… Like an area-effect weapon.