today i learned that pulling 800,000 mint plants out of my back garden makes our backyard smell fab.u.lous. and also, tom petty makes awesome gardening music.
after tilling the flower bed behind our deck a month or so ago, sam and i neglected to do absolutely anything with it at all. anything. at all. so it's been sitting there getting almost uglier than it was before, as the mint spread like wild fire (see post from a few weeks ago) and a million bajillion random plants i don't know the names of sprung up from nowhere. so today, after a late night of being out on the town and enjoying myself a little bit too much, i decided a little fresh air and sunshine was just what i needed.
at first, i thought i would just sit on the deck and read a book or catch up on some work that i've put off for a really long time (end of the year reports are so tedious). but after about 30 seconds outside, i knew that just sitting wouldn't do. besides it was just a little bit too breezy to be able to get anything done without my papers blowing around all over the place. and since i could see a few of the heartier mint plants peeking over the edge of the deck as they grew to gargantuan proportions, i knew it was time to bite the bullet and just go to town.
so, i ran down to the garage and grabbed my $5 shovel and dollar store gardening gloves, tied my sneaks up tight and threw on some old clothes and hit the yard. hard. i was out there for about an hour and a half digging and pulling and tossing and digging some more. with every mint plant i pulled, the fragrance got more and more heavenly, especially as it mixed with the honeysuckle growing wild at the border between our neighborhood and the next one over. the bed grew emptier and the pile behind me grew higher and my sense of satisfaction went through the roof as the scent of mint went to my head and the sweat poured down my temples.
unfortunately, when the song american girl came on (thanks tom) and i was rocking out in a mint fueled nirvana of gardening and sunshine, i started to dig up a few of the plants with what has to be the largest root base i have EVER seen. and as i'm digging (and digging and digging and digging) and pulling and tugging and wiggling and really getting into it because i now have a personal vendetta against these freaking plants, i notice that the soil looks funny. like, wiggly. shifty. crawly. full of ants. they must have had a hill buried in my overgrown, obscenely hideous garden and were freaking out as i wreaked havoc on the awfulness that was their home. fortunately, i noticed before they ended up all over me, and managed to shake them off my gloves and shoes pretty quickly. but, i did have to give up on the ridiculously hard to remove plants until my wonderful husband came out and dug while i pulled and we finally eradicated our garden of all things awful.
after all that work, i got a trash bag and filled it with my day's spoils, and headed inside with the minty aroma of success and accomplishment floating in behind me.
it was a good day.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment