Nature, Stop Touching Me

When we were in elementary and middle school, when my dad would mow the lawn, sometimes there would be a lot of grass clippings left to lay on the grass. This was not because my dad didn’t mow often enough; it was because we lived in a freakin’ terrarium, and you could practically hear the grass grow during the summer. Mark and I were the designated rakers and baggers of the clippings, and never have I hated a chore more than that. It’s a lie that the mornings are cooler in Florida—they were just as humid as the rest of the day, and Mark and I would drag our lazy selves out into the sticky damp yard, sweating before we started, and rake.

It probably took us less than an hour, but we bitched the entire time--because it was hot and unpleasant and taking away from our valuable laying-around-and-watching-movies time—essentially every day of our summer break. Anyway, this was my first brush (rake?) with this kind of outside job. The sweatiness, and the itchy grass. Whine, whine. My life was HARD.

In college, the idea of a garden was very romantic (in the idealistic sense, not the moonlight/roses sense) to me. The idea of growing all your own vegetables--having your own independent food source? Hell, YES. I went to live on a farm in Kansas for six weeks and garden to my heart’s delight.

But Kansas in the summer is HOT. As hot as Florida. And it’s not “cooler in the morning” there, either. (Seriously, who came up with this idea?). Granted, I was dragging myself out of bed sometime around 10:00, so maybe it would’ve been cooler earlier.

Anyway, a passive-aggressive nun who lived on this farm made it clear (in her passive-aggressive way) that I needed to get up earlier and do my job—and her version of my job happened to be pulling bindweed out of the garden. I don’t know if “bindweed” is the official name, but it’s this insidious weed that burrows down and is nearly impossible to uproot once it gets a good hold.

We spent one morning pulling this stuff in the garden and I thought I would die. It was sweaty humid yuck, yes, but the garden was full of mosquitoes, and they were BITING me. Continuously. Being bitten frequently by mosquitoes is its own form of torture, I think. The stupid organic farm had a bunch of useless bugkiller (probably good, but at the time I was ready to start crying) and it was no match for those things. All I could think: Why are we doing this? Why are we standing here torturing ourselves, when there is a cool basement RIGHT OVER THERE?

And I really didn’t like that nun.

So I hate the dirt and the heat and being bitten. Therefore I’ll never be a really intense gardener. Can’t I just read a book inside, please? Preferably while prone on my bed? But when I bought my house I managed to get excited for one summer about plants, and as a result I have a whole backyard full of perennials. The joy of perennials—they’re, well, perennial. I do nothing, and they pop right up every year.

This is my solution to all gardening from now on. God help me if I ever live in a place that requires mowing.