I love plants, and i love the look of nicely maintained gardens, but i have no skills or knowledge whatsoever. I wanted to plunge full-force into Advanced Level Yard Care, but the reality is that i need to start out with baby steps. As proof, i'll tell you the story of the garden hose.
We had lived here a week and it was time to mow the grass. We turned it into a family affair. While The Professor did the mowing, i decided to water all the plants, and we put the BabyGirl in her stroller outside to watch us at work. Our house came supplied with a garden hose on one of those roll-y cart things. The hose looked very unkempt. It was rolled on the roll-y cart, but not neatly. It was twisted and dirty and a big fat mess. I was very displeased by this. I'm living the suburban dream here, and i want my yard supplies to look good. Let's be honest, i want my house to look like Martha Stewart's own personal residence. I considered it a sign of poor character to have a messy garden hose. Of course any self-respecting, well-raised, hard-working person would not leave their possessions in such disarray. I set about to rectifying it.
Well, within 15 seconds i saw the truth of the matter: garden hoses have a mind of their own, and they will not be tamed. We got into such a fight, me and that hose. I unrolled the whole thing so i could straighten it and and get it untwisted, as the first step of the Hose Improvement Process. Then i connected it to the spigot and turned it on, to find out that the hose had 100 leaks in it. Water sprayed EVERYWHERE. I could have invited all the neighborhood kids to put on their bathing suits and come over for a good time, because it looked like this:
The trouble was, i was not appropriately dressed to get soaking wet, because i had not intended to get soaking wet. So there i was, muddy and cranky, and i conceded defeat. I said to the garden hose what its previous guardian must have said, "You win, garden hose. You can be as muddy and as twisted as you want."
Thankfully, The Professor bought me a new garden hose, and we became fast friends. The new hose helped me out of a hard time. The new hose is shiny, clean, perfectly wound, and eager to do your bidding.
A few days ago, the BabyGirl threw up in her crib, as a result of some medical issues she has developed recently. And we're not talking baby spit up. We're talking real, bona fide, human being vomit (bless her heart). It was disgusting. At the time i didn't know if it was routine vomit, or infectious vomit. I immediately warped into Mommy the Destroyer, and initiated Level 1 Virus Containment Protocol. All affected linens had to be quarantined and properly disinfected.
Now, in my old life when i lived in the city, it was a major pain and almost impossible to adequately deal with infectious vomit crib sheets. Because when you live in the city, you have to rinse out the vomit-sheets in your kitchen sink. It's so gross. First you have to clear out everything within a 5 foot radius of the sink, to prevent contamination. After you finish, you majorly scrub down the sink to make sure you killed all the puke germs. But for a few days afterwards, you still can't help but picturing vomit in your head while you are washing dishes in that sink.
Here, though, it's so beautiful. I could wash vomit-sheets everyday. I took them outside to rinse them out. And in the beauty of the outdoors with a nice crisp fall breeze, that atrocious vomit scent simply wafted away, rather than lingering in my kitchen. I hung the sheets, along with the clothes she was wearing at the time, on our neighbor's fence, and sprayed them down with my friendly new garden hose. After they were thoroughly rinsed, i sprayed the heck out of everything with vinegar (my sister got me hooked on vinegar recently because you can use it for EVERYTHING. It even claims to cure the common cold.). I left the clothes and sheets outside to dry in the sunshine, which is a huge antimicrobial bonus. I gave a huge fresh-air sigh of satisfaction. I love that garden hose.
It's true; He really is making all things new.
