novella
Active Member
A Gardener's Reverie (this is fictional!)
Well, the snow finally melted, so it’s tie a couple of bread bags over the sneakers and head out into the mud again. Squish squish. Took a look around yesterday to see what the score is. The whole place is shit. First thing I notice is a fucking rabbit ate something that was coming up. I forget what it is, but it was something good, I know it. Bastard. It was probably some kind of expensive beautiful thing that I paid good money for.
That’s the problem with spring gardening. You just have no fucking idea what’s coming up, unless you remember what you put in last year. But I am just not that kind of gardener, so it’s a bit of a crap shoot for a month or two. Last year I cultivated this enormous weed until it was about four feet high with a huge seed head. I think it was a weed. It was ugly as hell, so I sure hope I didn’t pay for it. Anyway, I’m going to watch out for that sucker this year and pull it right out when it pokes through. Vigilance, fellow gardeners!
Other chores I would recommend for this week are: picking up the post-winter beer cans and any detritus the dog has pulled from the garbage and scattered around the property over the winter. Bottles, cream containers, chicken bones, that sort of thing. This is called Spring Tidying. Another important chore is to kill whatever is eating your stuff, in my case chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, and woodchucks. You can try to scare them, but those critters are cheeky and think humans are not a serious threat. So, just go ahead and pop ‘em with a bb gun or something.
Another early spring chore worth doing pronto is weed poison. Don’t hold back, use the full arsenal. I’m sure there’s some wuss treehugger somewhere who will tell you that it’s bad for the environment. I’ve got news for that pussy: that’s what the stuff is for, to kill plants. Selectively, of course. That’s why it was invented, duh. So go right ahead.
Then you get your kid or someone energetic to rake around and stuff, gathering up all the branches and leaves you were too lazy to rake up in the fall. Get the kid to build a huge burnpile with all this material, stacking it as high as possible. It should be almost the size of your house. Tell him there’s a big reward at the end, to keep him going. While your kid is doing that, you get some chairs and couple beers and some salty snacks and set up a good position with a good view of the pile. Make sure you are not where the smoke is going to blow. Then you give the kid some matches and let him go to town. Tell him that’s the big reward. See? It all works out. First make sure the kid gets a bucket of water just in case. Then you let him set that baby on fire, and you kick back in the glow, keeping a careful eye on the proceedings while you enjoy a couple of those cold beers.
Moments like that make all that damned gardening work worthwhile.
I should point out that this is posted in the Writer's showcase, as this is pure fiction, this is neither my "natural" voice, nor is it my approach to gardening!!! I get the feeling that's not understood?
Well, the snow finally melted, so it’s tie a couple of bread bags over the sneakers and head out into the mud again. Squish squish. Took a look around yesterday to see what the score is. The whole place is shit. First thing I notice is a fucking rabbit ate something that was coming up. I forget what it is, but it was something good, I know it. Bastard. It was probably some kind of expensive beautiful thing that I paid good money for.
That’s the problem with spring gardening. You just have no fucking idea what’s coming up, unless you remember what you put in last year. But I am just not that kind of gardener, so it’s a bit of a crap shoot for a month or two. Last year I cultivated this enormous weed until it was about four feet high with a huge seed head. I think it was a weed. It was ugly as hell, so I sure hope I didn’t pay for it. Anyway, I’m going to watch out for that sucker this year and pull it right out when it pokes through. Vigilance, fellow gardeners!
Other chores I would recommend for this week are: picking up the post-winter beer cans and any detritus the dog has pulled from the garbage and scattered around the property over the winter. Bottles, cream containers, chicken bones, that sort of thing. This is called Spring Tidying. Another important chore is to kill whatever is eating your stuff, in my case chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, and woodchucks. You can try to scare them, but those critters are cheeky and think humans are not a serious threat. So, just go ahead and pop ‘em with a bb gun or something.
Another early spring chore worth doing pronto is weed poison. Don’t hold back, use the full arsenal. I’m sure there’s some wuss treehugger somewhere who will tell you that it’s bad for the environment. I’ve got news for that pussy: that’s what the stuff is for, to kill plants. Selectively, of course. That’s why it was invented, duh. So go right ahead.
Then you get your kid or someone energetic to rake around and stuff, gathering up all the branches and leaves you were too lazy to rake up in the fall. Get the kid to build a huge burnpile with all this material, stacking it as high as possible. It should be almost the size of your house. Tell him there’s a big reward at the end, to keep him going. While your kid is doing that, you get some chairs and couple beers and some salty snacks and set up a good position with a good view of the pile. Make sure you are not where the smoke is going to blow. Then you give the kid some matches and let him go to town. Tell him that’s the big reward. See? It all works out. First make sure the kid gets a bucket of water just in case. Then you let him set that baby on fire, and you kick back in the glow, keeping a careful eye on the proceedings while you enjoy a couple of those cold beers.
Moments like that make all that damned gardening work worthwhile.
I should point out that this is posted in the Writer's showcase, as this is pure fiction, this is neither my "natural" voice, nor is it my approach to gardening!!! I get the feeling that's not understood?
Or is that the same thing?