In Search of a Good Excuse

In Search of a Good Excuse

So I haven’t written for weeks and you want an explanation.  Writer’s block, perhaps?  No.  It’s actually a new disease called:  “Springtime Paralysis.”  This disease affects mostly mid-life people who do yard work.  It is probably a disease related to:  “Midlife Basketball Psychosis.”  The latter is a disease mostly contracted by men who, while in midlife, still think they should be on a basketball court with the young bucks.  Inevitably, they pull something – like a hamstring – and are sidelined until they come to their senses and realize, “Hey, I think my body is older than my soul and I can’t do this anymore.”  Common denominators in both syndromes are:  chronological age; youthful mentality; no one with common sense to deter or stop them; and opportunity.

Opportunity presents itself in many forms.  My symptoms start to come on in mid-February when the winter lashes its cruelest blows using snow and sleet and grey daytimes against my otherwise cherub-like demeanor.  Then, the petri dish that incubates my restless soul comes in the mailbox:  magazines from every garden supplier known to mankind.  Ones with bulbs and ones with perennials.  Tall grasses.  Short shrubs.   Giant thuja trees. The shade-lovers and the drought-tolerant.  Blasts of vibrant red, glorious yellow, majestic purple, soothing blue – the colors intoxicate me and I begin to feel woozy.  I reach for my pencil to create a Wish List.  Perhaps “Lust List” is more accurate.  If it makes it to the List, it may make it to the Planning Journal that I draft to map-out my garden.

Do not be impressed that I have a Planning Journal for my gardening efforts.  It is strictly a memory aid to help me because inevitably I dig out this year as a “weed,” some great thing I planted last year as an “exotic.” (regarding anything officially labeled “exotic,” please add five-to-ten dollars to estimated costs.) For example, I was given many peony tubers this year from a friend, so I had to map where I planted them lest I start tearing them out next year or mowing them down before they become what they are destined to be.  Do not vote for my sanity by saying:  “Oh, come on now, you would never do that.”  I would.  I’ve done it.  How someone can lose roses, thorns and all, I do not know.  But I am not alone.  I suspect that my lawn guy also has been part of the back-asswards process of mowing down what I put in.  Now I have driveway markers indicating when the young trees or shrubs went in.  It is so much easier now - it cuts down on me grinding my teeth every time he mows the grass.

I would be remiss if I didn’t share the Iris Story at this point.  One fine summer day I came home to find not one, not two, but seven large, black, filled, 30 gallon lawn/trash bags lying in a heap on my side driveway.  Question marks danced around the cartoon of my head.  Did the town crew clean the drainage ditch in front of the neighbor’s house and leave the junk there?  Not a chance.  Did someone drop their lawn cuttings?  Or was it a dead body?  With great reserve I peeled back the corner of the bag and then I recognized many, many iris tubers.   A lightbulb went off in my head:  my friend was having her yard cleaned up…. I called her husband.  He said, “Oh no.  They should’ve gone to the landfill.”  His wife was out of town, so I called her on her cell phone:  “Hey did you have your yard worker leave iris bulbs for me?”  “Yes.”  “How many bags?”  “She was supposed to leave two.  She was thinning them out for me.”

Hoo boy.  When your yard worker doesn’t know the difference between “thinning” and “utterly purging,” you are in for heartache.  I broke the news gently:  “They left seven bags of irises.”  The response wasn’t stunned silence, it was immediate profanity.  And rightly so.  Two days later my friend came to my house and began inspecting the contents of the bags because mysteriously her expensive hostas had disappeared from her home’s landscape as well.  They were not in the bags.  Just a million irises…. Only some of which I proceeded to plant in my valley.  The hostas never turned up.  That summer was the beginning of my body starting to feel chronologically challenged.

Then I did a very dumb thing.  The other morning when I woke up –with plenty to do already on my work list – I felt absolutely compelled to get the statue of the Blessed Mother moved from the far back of the property up into the perennial “garden.”  Well, it’s not truly a perennial garden yet, but I am trying really hard to make it one.  Moving the statue six years ago to its extended location in the far back involved three very strong Protestant young men.  That was my first clue.  Moving it to where it is today involved my 4-wheel drive vehicle and me, myself, and I.  It would serve as an important revelation of my physical capabilities at my prime long ago to, at this point, note that in high school I was “clocked” for the Presidential Physical Fitness Awards doing the flexed-arm-hang for negative three seconds.  That means I have less-than-zero upper arm strength.  Did I lift that statue two weeks ago?  Yes I did.  Do you remember the cartoons where people lift something or pull something and they end up with gorilla arms that hang longer than their whole body length?  Yep.  That’s me today.   You may not be able to physically see what happened to my muscles and tendons but I am putting a dent in the pain reliever bottle to help abate the “mild, yet incessant, discomfort” I am experiencing for two weeks straight.  That maneuver, plus raking and pulling weeds for close to two hours finished me off.  Lesson learned.  Maybe.  I won’t be heroically lifting volkswagens off of innocent victims any time soon.  I’m pretty sure I burned up the reserve of adrenaline with the raking of the garden.

All that being said, it’s been kind of tough to be inspired to write when all I want is a couch with no dogs on it and a hot pack draped over my arms.  <Picture me hoisting gingerale>  Here’s to a great gardening season and blooms all summer long!  It will be worth it. I just know it.