Coke Addiction

When I've been working hard in the yard on a hot day, nothing really hits the spot like an ice cold Coke.  No kidding.  In my 20 years living in the Northwest, I doubt if I had 20 Cokes (alright, that is probably an exaggeration, but I rarely had it).  But back in the sun, heat and land of Coca-Cola, somehow it becomes an alluring treat, promising to revive and refresh. The sweet, caffeinated, carbonated goodness calls to me like a siren song. And I don't even like Coke.

That's the thing... Coke has had fantastic marketing campaigns, all the way back to the early 1900's:  Delicious and Refreshing (1904), Good to the Last Drop (1907), Refresh Yourself (1924), The Pause that Refreshes (1929), What You Want is a Coke (1952), It's the Real Thing (1969), Coke Adds Life (1976), Have a Coke and a Smile (1979), Coke Is It (1982), The Official Soft Drink of Summer (1989). How do you fight that?

In my opinion, Coca-Cola really has so very little going for it.  It is way too sweet, highly acidic, has no nutritive content, and is full of high fructose corn syrup.  People use Coke to remove rust from metal parts that were left out in the rain.  If you leave a tooth in cola overnight, it will melt away. It is filled with empty calories and is horrible for the immune system (not to mention skin, teeth, bones and more).

And yet, Coke is so deeply engrained in our World, American (and particularly Southern) cultures.  I was visiting a state park the other day and noticed a family fitness trail.  There were little signs with facts about animals, then a suggestion to move like the animal 20 times .  It was a fun way to encourage kids to exercise and (hopefully) get the parents playing with the kids at the same time.  However, proudly posted on the bottom left hand corner of each sign was a note saying that this fitness trail was sponsored by Coca-Cola. Seriously???? Subliminally (or perhaps not so subliminally, for that matter), I knew my reward for working up a sweat by jumping like a frog or scampering like a squirrel was an ice cold Coke.

Everywhere I go, I see advertisements for Coke: billboards, movie posters, restaurants, ads before previews in movies, magazines, state park fitness trails... you name it.  And I probably get about 50% less inundation than the average citizen because I don't watch TV or listen to the radio. Regardless, it is impossible to ignore.  In many instances, it is actually easier to get Coke than water.

So here I am with a Coke addiction. Admitting I have a problem is the first step to recovery, right? 

The Glove of Death, part 1

Today we had a date to dance with the devil. Devil's grass, that is.  Man, I hate that stuff.  I stalled by watering anything that looked like 104 degrees might kill it, then watered the tomatoes, then deadheaded the snap dragons, but after that, I had to face the evil.

After pulling grass for about 5 minutes, I realized I was sitting on top of an ant bed.  (Round one goes to the grass.) Luckily, I only got about 3 bites, but Brian and Mom had a hard time because they were laughing so hard.  Glad I can provide a bit of amusement.

Once I moved, I pulled grass for about 30 seconds before asking about Roundup. Seems to me, if we're pulling out all of this grass, we should be able to do something to keep it gone. Those blasted rhizomes break off under ground, so the grass keeps coming back. So, the question is... can we somehow kill the grass all the way to its very roots? Turns out that you can (supposedly... remember, this is devil's grass we're talking about), but you have to apply the Roundup to the foliage, not the roots.  However, the cursed grass is growing within the phlox and iris bed. Enter... the Glove of Death! (cue music)

The Glove of Death is one of Brian's things.  I have no idea how he found out about it, but he used to be the gardener for his church in California when he was a teenager, so perhaps he learned about it then.  The idea is really simply: the glove is soaked in Roundup, placed on the hand (over a rubber household cleaning glove - it is poison, after all) then applied to the unwanted foliage.  By using a glove, he is able to apply poison to the offending plant, without impacting the phlox and irises below the grass. For coolness factor, the Glove of Death is black. Oooooooooh!

So, if this works, round two may go to the home team. (Yay, us!) If it doesn't, we're back to pulling... one blade at a time.

Stay tuned for The Glove of Death, part 2 to find out how it all turns out.  Coming to a blog near you in a couple of weeks.

Sweat: A Matter of Semantics

My mother once told me that Southern girls don't sweat; they glisten or glow, perhaps even perspire, but never sweat. If that's the case, then when I garden or hike, I glow like the meltdown of Three Mile Island in a torrential downpour. Beads of "glisten" roll down my face and head so that I'm walking around with my own personal rainstorm, like a Douglass Adams character.

As a poster child for autoimmune diseases, one of my many health joys is dealing with the daily annoyances of Sjogren's Syndrome, a disorder in which the immune system attacks the moisture producing cells in the eyes, mouth, etc. This means that I often have ridiculously dry eyes and can't produce enough saliva to swallow food without additional liquid. Sadly, my "glow" producers seem entirely unaffected. Where is the logic of that? It seems like I'd at least get some positive out of it, but no, sweat continues in epic quantities.

Perhaps I should reexamine my very Southern-ness.  If I sweat, does this mean I'm not a true Southern girl? Does my father's Pennsylvania heritage somehow taint my background and induce excessive moisture? Oh, the horror!

Some of you, who knew me from Seattle, may ask if the decay of true Southern-like gentility was a result of the 20 years I spent in the Northwest.  If only. From the earliest days of 4-H camp and biking to the swimming pool, Linda + Heat = Perspiration.  When you add Activity to the equation, we're back to nuclear meltdown.

Goose Poop Park

A Non-Gardening Day!!

Each morning, Mom and I get up a little after 6:00 and go for a walk.  We walk for about a mile, then come home for breakfast before heading out to the yard.  Today, after making coffee, I suggested going out to the Biscuit Barn for breakfast.  (OK, that isn't really the name of the place, but they make awesome biscuits and the real name isn't nearly as good.) So Brian, Mom and I went to breakfast.

Once we were on the road, I shared my ulterior motive with Mom... this was all an ploy to get out of doing yard work for the day! Turns out that all of us had sore hands from the previous several days of work and we needed a little time off.  After breakfast we went for another walk at a lovely park, during which time gardening was not even discussed.

Our post breakfast walk took place at Rhodes-Jordan Park in Lawrenceville, Georgia.  It is a lovely park, circling a lake, with a paved path that wanders back and forth through trees, across a dam, over boardwalks and next to a play ground.  The only drawback is the presence of water fowl. In fact, that is such a drawback, I hereby re-christen this park as Goose Poop Park, in honor of... well... you can probably guess.

Interestingly, I believe one gets better exercise at GPP than one would get in a less poopy place. Jumping and tip-toeing from clean spot to clean spot is certainly beneficial exercise, especially good at improving balance and agility!

Hooray!  Tomorrow we're off the hook again because we're driving up to the mountains for the day.

It was a very good day.

Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.

Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.

Thus marks the gates of hell and the way out of my garage.  You see, all gardening days start in the garage from whence comes gardening shoes (running shoes past their prime), gloves, buckets and tools.  I suppose it should say, "abandon all hope, ye who exit here", but that may be taking things just a bit too literally. Moving on.

Dante's Inferno clearly mentions the nine circles of hell and the punishments allotted to those who commit the deadly sins.  I really think he missed the most insidious punishment of all... quack grass.

Seriously, Bermuda grass (also known as Devil's grass) uses runners to insinuate itself into every part of the garden. There are two ways to get rid of it (read: slow its progress for a short while): cover the area for a year... yeah right, or dig down into the soil and pull the rhizomes out by hand.  Sounds easy, right?  It would be if the Georgia soil were not rock hard from years of drought, the grass rhizomes weren't terribly brittle and easily broken, and it wasn't DEVIL'S GRASS!

Seriously, Dante missed a level. Going down!


This stuff is in the big bed in the front yard and the big bed in the back yard... and in the yard itself, everywhere. I thought it was crab grass until I looked it up today.  Turns out that crab grass is fun and easy to pull, at least comparatively. Devil's grass requires the gardener to sit in the dirt and scratch at the soil until finding one of the runners.  Once the runner is spotted, the gardener must pull like mad until it breaks.  A really satisfying runner can be upwards of five or six feet long. An annoying one breaks off immediately and causes the gardener to employ several curse words of increasing intensity. Most runners are annoying, at best.

So, the 10th circle of hell is for mean people.  They will be forced to spend all eternity ridding a small bed of Devil's grass. Based on my gardening experiences, that would indeed be the very essence of Hell.

The Dreaded Yucca.

The dreaded yucca plant is a Georgia native.  Who knew?  My friend Gloria, who is a horticulturalist, told me so.  As far as I'm concerned, the yucca comes from the same level of hell as cacti, bayberry and holly bushes. They are all pokey and evil. Nuff said.

For the past 3 months, mom and I have been deciding what to do with the yuccas.  They were overgrown and had loads of dead bits, overall a very unattractive addition to our side/front bed.

I voted to dig them up. You can't possibly get rid of yuccas, even if you pull them up by the very root. Last time we pulled them out by the root, we broke a pitchfork.

Yuccas put out these crazy rhizomes that look like sweet potatoes, that break at the slightest provocation and will create more and more and more yuccas.  It is sort of like the Hydra of Greek mythology... cut off one head and three grow back. Pull out one yucca and the roots will take over the world. But I digress.

Mom's position was to simply cut the yuccas down to the ground and allow them to regrow. Sure, if you want to do it the easy way.

So this morning was spent cutting yuccas back to the ground. Do you know what...? It was fun!  There is nothing like the cutting back of an evil, pokey plant, then digging in its innards and pulling out huge handfuls of dead yucca guts.  What a cathartic experience!  I didn't even mind the extra waterfalls of sweat cascading down my head and neck into the extra thick, long sleeved shirt which is required when working with the villainous evergreen.  It was worth every gallon of it.  It was also worth the blisters that came from using the wrong tool to cut through the never ending spikes. Oh the joy of seeing them razed to the ground!

Today, I thought gardening was OK.

Daydreams

Yesterday I was working on the big bed in the back yard.  In the 8 weeks since I last worked the bed, the violets, baby oak trees and devil's grass had taken over the Japanese irises.  Violets are a pain in the butt, but relatively easy to remove. Just grab the whole bunch and pull...oh so slowly.  Baby oak trees require much digging to ferret out the acorn, then they are pretty easy to get rid of as well. But devil's grass - oh, the agony!

While working on the devil's grass, I fell into a meditative state, like the one my neighbor told me about.  In my meditation, I was dreaming about all of the other things I could be doing rather than gardening. You know, from my 20 years in corporate America.  Instead of pulling the accursed grass, I could be:

• Attending a staff meeting in which we discussed the same thing we had discussed for the previous 24 months.
• Or, I could be dealing in office politics with people who were power hungry or simply wanted fame and fortune, rather than the good of the project/team/business. 
• Or, I could be on the phone attending an unending status meeting about a project I had little to do with. 
• Or, I could be providing training to folks who had no interest in the content... better yet, with those who were opposed to the content and felt the need to vocalize their feelings in the most negative way possible. 

 Ahhhh... any or all of those would be held in the glory of an artificially lit, well air-conditioned  cubicle farm.  Could there be anything better?

My dreamlike meditation ended as the sweat from my face poured onto my sunglasses, making it impossible to see the grass in front of me. Coming to, I realized how much I really hated gardening.

A Reluctant Gardener.

I am a reluctant gardener.  Never have I been a true dirt digger. Instead, my preference is to pay someone else to mow, weed, mulch and do any other menial task relegated to the care and maintenance of the yard. Getting dirty is not my thing.

Others say that gardening is the key to life.  Mom says it keeps her sane as she deals with Alzheimer's. My neighbor says she goes into a Zen meditation whenever she gardens. My husband says it it fun.  Whatever. All I know is that at the end of a gardening session, I'm hot, sweaty and dirty.  Generally, there are new mosquito bites and scratches on my skin.

Regardless, I garden. In fact, I'm the driving force behind gardening at our house.  "Hey kids, let's put on our shoes!" has replaced getting ready for work or reading a book. Hmmm. (Sorry Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.)

Why do I garden? To keep the peace with Mom, to keep the yard looking pretty, and to ensure all is well in our little world. In other words, I garden because I have to. And I'm getting pretty good at it.