Flower Power

I have a love-hate relationship with my garden.  I love the thought of gorgeous flower beds and yummy, homegrown veggies.  I hate actually having to work to get them.  I love being out in the fresh air, but the minute I step my foot off the sidewalk and into the garden I'm praying "Please don't let there be any snakes.  Please, please don't let there be any snakes."  So far the biggest scare I have gotten, and it happens every year when I first go out, is when a toad jumps out and startles me and I scream, and the toad, dirt, weeds and whatever tools I have in my hand fly into the air.

 My friend Joanne says she gardens by the Pointing Method.  "I point and someone else plants what I want where I want it."  If she can't convince her husband, she pays someone to do it.  While I wish I could adopt her method, it isn't in the cards for me.  So every year, with great fantasies of bouquets on every table in my house and BLTs for dinner, out I go.

Yesterday was the first day I have worked in the yard this year and the way I kind of moan when I have to move my legs today is giving me away.  I knew my bum knee was not going to let me kneel much, so I spent a couple of hours bending over, (I remember cringing with embarrassment when my mom did that back when I was a limber teen-ager) pulling weeds and generally sorting through the dregs of the flower garden in my front yard.

I do love to pull up weeds right after it has rained because their resistance is at its weakest but all my flower beds are a ratio of about ninety-percent weeds to ten percent something I can't remember what it was when I planted it.  It's been a whole year or more and if I can't remember where I parked the car at the mall, how would I remember what that green thing is among all the other green things?  So after two hours in a stoop laborer position it still doesn't look like anybody had been working out there at all.

And then there is the business of what to wear.  My neighbor, Harriet, always works in her yard wearing cute shorts and matching tops. She is up and out, dressed to work by about seven a.m.  And her nails are done.  I think she wears jewelry.  She goes out every day and takes care of things, like weeds, as they happen instead of letting things go till she gets snide looks from people walking by.  It is really her fault that my yard is a mess.  I can't compete so I don't get out there.  Well, not till after nine or so and a bunch of caffeine.

 Sometimes I go out to get the paper in my pajamas and spot a weed that needs pulling and an hour later I realize (as do most of the neighbors driving by on their way to work) that I have forgotten to get dressed. Again.  So I go in and put on my gardening clothes: the jeans with artistic holes,  an old under-shirt of Dennis's that he says won't stay tucked down in his pants and why did I buy him that size in the first place? and my trusty gardening clogs that let me walk into mud but also let the mud ooze into the holes on top and stain my feet with our Oklahoma red dirt that takes ten minutes with a brush to scrub off.

Oh,  and my headband because just the thought of physical labor makes me sweat and it drips into my eyes and I'm blind enough out there what with the dirt splatting up onto my glasses.  If I am really planning ahead I put on sunscreen that probably lasts three minutes, but in case the sunscreen doesn't work I have my gardening hat which is especially designed with some space-age material to keep the sun off my delicate skin.  My-son-the-doctor, who thinks about sunburn and skin cancer and such, purchased this for me.  It is---I swear I'm not making this up---two-thirds of a yard across from brim to brim and, except for the charming ribbons that tie under my chin and produce more sweat, and when I'm wearing it, if I were not two or three times her weight, I could sail off toward Kansas, like the Flying Nun.

I also have gardening gloves that I put on before I start to dig, several right hand, several left hand but not an equal amount of both, so I turn one of them around backwards and wear the pinkie part over my thumb and vice versa.  It doesn't matter that my hand is held in a claw position when I do this because somewhere along the line I take off the gloves and wind up with dirt stains on my hands and mud under my fingernails and there ya' go.  The brush I use on my feet works a little and scraping my fingernails along the bottom of the soap dish where the gunk builds up works a little but by the end of spring there will be stains on my hands that last through Fourth of July.

 And I love having birds in my garden but when I bend down to pull a weed and they dive down and peck me on the behind. I hate that.

A Dozen Things I've Learned Painting Kitchen Cabinets

1.)  Once you get over yourself and let the grandkids "help" things go faster and with a whole lot less anxiety.  Making memories is a whole lot more important than a perfect paint job and besides, then if somebody inspects things closely, you can blame it on the kids.


2.)  Prep is everything.  It is a good thing to number the cabinet doors, making a map of the kitchen to show where you started in your numbering so that they can be re-attached easily.  Then when you paint over the numbers, you can use the map to wipe paint off your fingers.


3.)  If you have to stop in the middle of your job, wrap your brushes in plastic and put them in the freezer.  This keeps you from having to clean the brushes every time.  It also gives you about an hour to rest and relax while you wait for the brushes to thaw when you get back and are hurrying to do one more coat of paint before you have to stop and drive somebody somewhere. Or start dinner.  Or clean the bathroom before the company arrives.  Or scream out loud.


4,)  Open shelving is very modern and hip.  Everything is right in front of you and accessible, including the stuff you shoved in there trying to hide it from yourself and other for years.


5.) A little paint on your dishes, which you so efficiently left on the shelves because there is no sense moving them twice while the doors are being painted in the garage and who would be sloppy enough to get the brush way up there anyway, just gives them more character.


6.)  People who already have white hair and choose white paint for their projects will be ahead of the game.  It is called frosting, if anybody asks.


7.) When the dog comes through with an interesting white pattern on her side it is good to search the just painted walls for the corresponding pattern.


8.)  People pay enormous amounts to have designs painted on their toenails at a nail salon. You should look into copyrighting White Rorschach Patterns on Red Toenails.  It may bring big bucks.


9.)  If it is raining and the garage door is up, the door does not keep the rain from blowing in and onto anything that has been freshly painted and is sitting around waiting to dry.


10.) Dried paint sticks to newspapers and attaches itself forever to the underside of whatever you have been trying to paint.  Years from now archaeologists will drive themselves crazy trying to read the bits and pieces of the news that have been preserved on the backs of your cabinets doors.


11.) Yes, you can park a car in the seven feet of space between the garage fridge and the tables holding wet-painted cabinet doors when the forecast calls for hail, but you will not be able to get out the car door no matter how much weight you have lost during the stress of the project.


12.) Somebody, somewhere is waiting to earn some money rescuing do-it-yourselfers from the messes they have made.  It will cost roughly twice what you would have paid them if they had done the project themselves from start to finish.