Working two or three hours daily, I’m readying my beloved garden for winter.
Two sorts of tools dominate: bare hands, and a long, sharp, serrated kitchen knife. For sixteen years I’d sawed away at my massive hostas with pruners. Ow, the blisters, the pain…Then, a couple of years ago, I’d padded into the kitchen to uncramp my hand, and had an inspiration. Hmmm…that long, serrated kitchen knife might work... I’d grabbed it and thumped outside. Wow! A few ground-hugging slashes: hosta la vista! So. Incredibly. Easy! Ages of hard work reduced to an hour.
I find myself humming Jimmy Durante’s infectious song, “…make-- just one person happy…” as I cheerfully chop away.
Then I spend three hours on my knees scraping shriveled paint off the drained fountain pool’s floor. Last year’s sprayed-on layer had bubbled in the summer’s heated water, and now, with nothing to cover the mess, the problem is obvious. I sigh. Every single bump has to be scraped gone without compromising the fiberglass. A sharp-bladed paint scraper won’t do. So, ever clever, I choose a wooden paint stir-stick to remove the mess. Why? Its rounded edges won’t penetrate the fiberglass floor, or pierce the pool’s circular edge. And it’s easy to manipulate. When one end wears down, I simply flip to the other end. Cool.
Scrape, scrape. An inch at a time. I look ridiculous, with my knees outside the pool resting on a pad, hinder in the air, hands and torso dropped eight inches down into the pool as I clean right up to the big fountain’s base. Half a bucket of paint flakes later, the pool bottom looks much better. A quick Mr. Clean spray ‘n wipedown, and one monster fountain’s done, with four much smaller ones to go. They’ll be easy.
A fascinated resident chipmunk peers into the empty pool, then hops down and rockets around the interior, just for fun. Another springy bounce, and he’s out again, and gone in a blink.
Next, there’s the laborious task of chopping down the huge cannas. My super-duper knife topples the monsters, leaving a mountainous mess. Then I drag the wrist-thick stems and leaves to the alley for pickup. It takes a long time to pile them tidily. Finally, I dig up all their huge rhizomes for storage till spring.
Later, Les and I bring out the main fountain’s enormous cover, erect it, and bang thirty ten-inch long peg-nails through the grommets, into the grass. Hooray! My waterproof evergreen ‘tree’ is ready for its blanket of tiny Christmas lights.
Today I woke about 3 am, and, while the coffee brewed, sleepily padded outside to the alley with a bag of trash for the rubbish bin- and interrupted a fat raccoon making a mess. He’d not only scattered the nine-foot long canna stalks all over the alley, just for fun, but also managed to wrestle the big, heavy trash container to the ground, flip open the lid, and pull out the only other bag, to sort through. We studied each other for a while; eventually he clasped his hands around his belly and reluctantly turned away. There was no fear, just annoyance. (I’d spotted him in the garden once or twice in the wee hours of other nights, strolling around.)
I’d toiled; he’d foiled. The nerve! I hissed, just to see what he’d do. Unimpressed, Fatso waddled into the night, leaving me feeling foolish, and just as annoyed. It took a while to re-gather all that vegetation into another pile, but I decided to foil more potential mischief by sticking some old mothballs in both trash bags. Ha! That’d fix ‘im.
Four hours later I went out to look; that same trashcan had been toppled again! Both bulging bags squatted glumly atop the opened lid. Ignoring the mothball stink, he’d as much as said, ‘Get stuffed, you old bat!’
I was undone with laughter!