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When one is out and about traveling for close to a month during June in North Dakota, one knows that one will return home in July to a few things. The first is warm weather; the second is much larger shrubs and flowers; and the third is a varied collection of very happy and healthy weeds. While I can live with the first two expected outcomes, the third I can happily live without.
It’s not that I am anti-weed – well, not in an unhealthy way. I know weeds have a vested interest in growing and often have to fight to do so. I respect their tenacity. For the most part, I am okay with them popping up here and there in the lawn area of the backyard (but not those dastardly dandelions – those are not welcome here anywhere). Weeds that thoughtfully scatter themselves in the lawn area of the backyard must survive the romps of Cooper and Chompers and receive weekly haircuts when Steve takes his ride-on around the yard (and don’t get excited and ask for the 411 on Steve – he is not #4, he is just my lawn guy and I pay him real money to come weekly and tend to that responsibility). As long as the backyard lawn weeds stay below my radar and don’t marry and start reproducing we get along just fine.
Alas, there are some weeds who dare to dream big dreams and lay down roots either in my little front yard lawn or even worse – in the few areas in my front yard that I am trying to populate with flowers and flowering shrubs. That is where I draw the line. When weeds grow in these areas it is like High Noon in my yard. I am on one side of the walkway with my garden gloves and my pockets stuffed with every possible digging, cutting and mangling device I might possibly need when in the throes of battle and the defiant weed with its obnoxious prickly, sticky leaves is on the other. I am like Gary Cooper – determined to save the few thriving plant friends I have from the noxious intruders who would happily take over if they could.
I went onto the walkway today and faced down the interlopers and except for some flying dirt in my eye from an overzealous tug on a deeply rooted foe and a creepy interaction with a grasshopper I emerged victorious. Although I must admit, that I have an aversion to grasshoppers and as such there was some screaming and awkward flailing about in the middle of my battle with the weeds – by me, not the grasshopper.
Tomorrow I will once again make my way down the walkway to carry on what will be a summer long battle between me and the weeds that seek to move into my tiny little corner of the world. I hope that grasshopper has moved on by then…screaming like a girl and flailing about like a marionette having a seizure is unbecoming of a warrior…and the last thing I want is to be embarrassed in front of the enemy…that is behavior unbecoming a Gary Cooper wannabe.
Day seven hundred and thirty-two of the new forty – obla di obla da
Ms. C
