Yardwork A-go-go
Once you start yardwork, it never ends. This is what I learned over the weekend as I worked in my Wild World of Weeds, Wasps, and Whatnot.

My goal for the weekend was to remedy my problematic Flowerbeds O' Dead Things. I hoped to rifle through the riff-raff of random plants, weeds, and general chaos to determine 1) Which things were plants and which things were weeds, and then B) Leave the living, remove the dead.

I started in the backyard, attempting the biggest problem first. The flowerbed (and I use the term 'flower' loosely, as there are no actual flowers anywhere to be found) along the back fence was in utter dissarray. The fencing people (and by 'fencing' I mean the guys who built my fence last week, not sword-fighting people with metal collanders for face masks), had left me some very thoughtful, but very large mounds of dirt, proudly displayed in the very middle of my 'flower' bed. They had also left a giant trench all along the fence, where much of this dirt initially came from, I'm sure. So the first part of my project was to move the dirt back into the trench and even it out into a nice, flat, flowerbed.

Actually, the first part of my project was to buy a shovel. Off to Home Depot, I went.

Upon returning with proper gardening supplies, I began to move the dirt. Slowly, as it was heavy, rocky, and dry. Eventually the huge mound of dirt fit nicely and neatly into the trench and throughout the 'flower' bed. Next, weeds.

I began to pull the obvious weeds. Upon pulling the obvious weeds, this lead to many more less obvious weeds lying in wait underneath the dirt and clinging to their friends, the obvious weeds. The more I pulled, the more weeds appeared. I began to suspect they were growing and popping up right before my eyes. For every weed I pulled, ten more weeds appeared. They were everywhere. It was much like that arcade game with the foam hammer, where you whack the heads of the gophers as they pop out of the holes. I'd pull a weed, and pretty soon more weeds were springing up left and right, faster than I could attack them. Weeds running amok.

Eventually I had to call it quits on the weed pulling, or else I'm fairly sure I'd still be out there pulling weeds right now. It had to stop. I cleared away some rubble, sprayed some weed killer (fulling believing that this stuff will totally and completely kill all of my weeds. yeah right), and then I began trimming the, well, large bush-type thing.

I have no idea what kind of bush or tree or shrub or plant or alien creature this thing is, but it needed to be trimmed, whatever it is. It was thorny, so it could possibly be a rose bush. I began trimming the dead parts, and the parts hanging over the fence, and the parts poking me in the face. Pretty soon I was left with a few good branches/arms/limbs/sprouts, and unfortunately a much thinner tree-type thing. Oh well. If it is meant to live and be something, it will live and be something. At any rate, even sparse it looked better than before.

There was a smaller version of the same tree-type thing nearby, so I trimmed that, too. They make a lovely couple, whatever they are.

I realized I needed to build a retaining edge to the 'flower' bed, where the fencing people had removed one side of the retaining wall. Otherwise, all of my dirt and weeds will run out the end of the bed, and all over the lawn. Hmmm. What could I use? How about some of those random cement blocks lingering about the yard for no apparent reason? Perfect. I located three blocks and created an edge to the bed. Not the prettiest, but functional for now. Just what I needed.

Then, I mulched. I mulched like I'd never mulched before. Mostly because I'd never had a 'flower' bed to mulch, so mulching would have been a silly thing to do before now. It only makes sense.

After I put down a nice layer of mulch, I stood back to survey my work. One 'flower' bed down, four more to go. Good grief, this was hard work.

I moved to the next 'flower' bed, along the back of my house. Things should go faster from here, as the rest of the beds didn't require as much work as the Mega Bed along the back fence. Now, throughout the yard I've noticed random rocks. Mostly in the 'flower' beds, but also just along the side of the house. I guess for decoration? Who knows.

I moved the rocks in the current bed, to the dirt patch near the fence, where the bed ends, but before the sidewalk begins. Sure, a rock garden would be lovely here! I arranged some rocks there, in hopes to prevent the dirt from running all over the place as it usually does when I water, and to get them out of the 'flower' bed. Once the rocks were removed, then I attacked the weeds.

These weeds were much less in number, and much less ferocious in nature. The weeding didn't take long. Soon I was trimming the bushes. Two of the bushes were most definitely, probably, nearly certainly rose bushes, as they were quite thorny and rose bush-esque. If roses appear on them one day, then I will know these are, in fact, rose bushes.

I also removed the dead things that didn't survive the 'planting'. I use the term 'planting' loosely, as the previous owner's idea of planting was to keep the plants in the plastic containers they come in, set them on top of the 'flower' bed, throw a scoop or two of dirt in the generaly vicinity of the plant, and you're done. A planted plant. Naturally, most of the plants did not survive. Tragic, to say the least.

Once the maintenance was finished, I mulched. Again. Oh how I love the mulch.

What I do not love, however, are wasps. As I worked on this second bed, I noticed increasing wasp activity buzzing dangerously close to my head and body. I happen to be highly allergic to wasp and bee stings, so every time a wasp would come near, I would throw down my tools, leap back, and take a few steps running in one direction or another. I soon noticed I was doing this every few minutes, so I came to the conclusion that there must be a wasp nest somewhere close by. Great. Just what I need.

Remembering that I had an old can of wasp spray, I went to retrieve it. Armed with my trusty spray I began to walk around my house in search of the nest. Nothing. I came back to where the wasps were attacking me, and looked closely. Nothing. As far as I could see, no wasp nest was on my house or trees or bushes. Where the heck were these things coming from?

A wasp buzzed by my head and I watched where it went. And then I saw it. A HUGE nest in the corner of the window of my neighbor's house, right along the side of my house. Perfect.

This meant these wasps weren't mine. But since the wasps do not observe my Wasp No-Fly Zone, I was being periodically attacked by my neighbor's rude, uncooperative wasps. I couldn't very well go over there and spray the nest on a house that isn't mine. Plus, this would only anger the wasps and cause them to attack me. And since I am highly allergic to one wasp, I figured a whole pack of them attacking at once would surely do me in. I did not relish the idea of a wasp attack rendering me helpless on my lawn, alone, where I would surely get a severe sunburn while laying immobile on my lawn until someone discovered me. My neighbor wasn't home, so I couldn't go over to ask her to please remove her wasps from near me. Oh my. What to do?

The next bed I needed to work my magic on just happened to be on the side of the house adjacent to the wasp infestation, but fortunately this bed was in pretty good shape, so it wouldn't require me to spend much time there. I was hesitant to work there. Leaning over the bed would put my back to the nest, giving them prime opportunity to attack, possibly flying up my shirt or into my shorts. This was not a fun thought for me.

I quickly assessed what needed to be done, and quickly jumped into action. I was sure to keep my can of spray close by, in the event of more wasp attacks. I had another large pile of dirt to haul away, so I hurredly shoveled and carried dirt as quickly as I could, all the while keeping a watchful eye on the nest. I could count at least seven wasps hanging around on the outside of the nest. Who knew how many were inside, planning the attack on me.

As I worked, a wasp would buzz by and I would again throw down my tools and do my Anti-Wasp Dance, making sure there were no wasps on me and running in the opposite direction of the wasp for a few steps. If any neighbors were watching me from a distance, I'm sure my Wasp Antics in the yard were quite amusing. Little would they know, my Wasp Dance was a life-saving ritual.

I moved the dirt, I pulled the weeds. I moved more rocks. I trimmed the non-thorny, non-rose bush-esque plants, and then I mulched. Done, and done.

I quickly moved my tools around to the front of the house and began working on the big shrub across the front bed. I hate this shrub. It's one of those Edward Scissorhands bushes that can be trimmed into a shape, but currently it is in the shape of a very uneven box-like shrub, with a good chunk of it being mostly dead. At this point I was sad to not be Edwinna Scissorhands. I could have used to extra blades to speed through the process of trimming this shrub.

First, I cut away the dead stuff, which left a nice big hole in one section on the side. It couldn't be helped. It was either brown ugly branches, or a big hole. At least the hole might eventually fill in.

Then I tried to even out the bush, making it flat across the top and smooth down the sides, like a proper box. This was harder to do than I expected. First of all, the bush was planted too close to the sidewalk, and it had grown over about half of the sidewalk, and also over part of the driveway. While I would have preferred to cut it back further from the sidewalk, I soon discovered just trimming a little bit was a major task. Not to mention, making it even and flat was pretty much a joke.

After trimming for awhile, I had to stop. It wasn't as bad as when I started, but it wasn't as good as Edward Scissorhands would have done. It was more square-like than before, yet with some mildly undulating waves here and there. It was back from the sidewalk a bit, but not a lot. Whatever. I hate this bush. It's good enough for now. We'll consider it 'art'.

I began raking up the leaves and branches I'd trimmed, and clearing out a lot of debris that had collected in and around the branchy bush. As I reached underneath to grab one big pile of debris, I discovered my second biggest enemy of the outdoors, second only to the sting of the wasp and bee: ants.

I stuck my hand right in the middle of a GIANT antbed, cleverly disquised as a pile of leaves and a potato chip bag. Since when to ants eat potato chips? Chips found in nature, no less? Whatever. Luckily I had my gardening gloves on, so I was able to shake of the glove, which was now thoroughly swarmed with ants, before the ants got to my hand. In addition to being highly allergic to bees and wasps, I am also highly allergic to ant bites. This was my lucky day, having stumbled onto both wasps and ants.

I jumped up and did my Anti-Ant Dance to make sure no ants were on me. Then I went in search of my trusty AMDRO, which actually isn't trusty yet, since I've never used it before. A co-worker recommended it, and I'd gotten some at Home Depot earlier in the day, just in case. I proceeded to AMDRO the heck out of that mound. I also sprayed it with some other ant/general bug pesticide. I wanted those ants dead. Now. For-e-ver . . .

Once the ants had been averted, I proceeded to the weed portion of the front 'flower' bed event. I'd noticed a tall, weed-like thing growing for quite some time. It was probably a weed, but had some tree-like features. The weedness came through in the random placement of it, being nowhere in particular in the bed, not related to anything else growing there, but definitely several feet tall. I'd left it alone for awhile, but finally come to the conclusion that it was either a very big weed-esque growth, or a giant marijuana plant. Either way, it had to go. Marijuana on display in the front yard was probably not a good thing. And a giant all-consuming weed was almost as bad.

I pulled the growth and finished that bed with none other than a nice layer of mulch. Aaaaah, the mulch.

I did the same routine to the last remaining 'flower' bed, sparing the life of a living, yet really annoyingly sprawling plant, only because I didn't have the heart to kill one of the few living things left in any of the beds. I will probably regret that, but for now the plant has one more chance to impress me.

At the conclusion of this weekend's Yardwork A-go-go, my 'flower' beds look at least 108 times better, and I can proudly say I did it myself. I've also been rewarded with a lovely sunburn on my neck, back, and shoulders. You may ask why I did not wear sunscreen, and the answer is simple. There was a struggle of chemicals between sunscreen vs. bug spray. The combination of the two chemicals proved to be somewhat toxic for me. In the end, bugspray won, although I still managed to receive more bug bites than I preferred. But the bites are covered in a nice shade of pink sunburn, so it all worked out. Or something.

Thankfully I managed to escape all wasp stings and ant bites. Unfortunately I will put the wasps and ants to the challenge again tonight as I admire my 'flower' bed handiwork, during my tour of the yard.

Tonight, I must mow.

C.T.