Beneath our Norway maple – felons, vandals and thieves

It’s garden season. All the trees, bushes and pretty flowers in my backyard look so innocent. But I have learned – the hard way – that they are out to get me. They are a well-organized crime family, with covert agents working behind the scenes. I’m out there constantly, hoping to survive the daily threat.

Let’s start with the killer weeds. They hide under the flowers until they are big enough to break through on their own. I have to bend over, like an open safety pin, to tug, twist, and yank at their stubborn roots. Some tap roots are so entrenched, they are embedded among the flower roots. “We’ll show her. She’s not getting rid of us without upending the posies too.”

Then there are the weeds stemmed with thorns. If I can pull them out early enough, the thorns are sorta soft and regular garden gloves can handle them. But miss them when they have snuck between the taller plants at the back? When these terrorists are 4-feet tall, only Kevlar gloves can protect me from the emergency room.

I almost wound up there yesterday. Working in a tank top to endure the humidity, I was backed into a thicket trying to tame an entire aggressive overgrown family. My flowering white anemones had gone wild, invading about 20 feet beyond their home. Bent over, I was ripping out the 2-foot plants by their shallow roots, happily stacking up the victims. When I began to stand up, I was totally attached – the length of my back – to a thorny berry bush. I couldn’t straighten up. No amount of tugging loosened me or my top from the thick sharp needles. I could see the scissors nearby and eventually used a thick sheaf of the dead flowers to bat them toward me. I was somehow able to reach around my back and cut the fat, stabbing stem at my waist. Finally free to move, I went to the house to remove the upper 2 feet of the weed, my top, and the bloody thorns.

And then there’s the bugs. A few weeks ago, I was fighting the swarming gnats invading my eyes. Thankfully, the nearby creek was sprayed and the swarms are gone. Now it’s just ants, mosquitoes, and whoever the cowards are eating my ankles. Although I sprayed myself, the four bites below my right calf are red, swollen, and v-e-r-r-r-y itchy. Only three on the left leg. Since I can’t see them, Dear Richard helps me monitor the red circles around them. My grandson had Lyme disease last year, and I can’t risk adding that to my list of co-morbidities.

What to do? Wearing pants tight around the ankles on a soupy, muggy day? Then they bite only the tops of my feet. Does avoiding arm bug bites require long sleeves? In July? Maybe one of those head-to-toe hazardous duty suits would deter the felons from this summer gang war. I can see the obituary now: “She died of heat prostration and dehydration. But when she succumbed, happily in her garden, she was appropriately dressed for combat.”

Too many people are terrified of spiders for me to pooh-pooh them. I’m not afraid, but I really do hate walking face first into their webs. Overnight, they build webs in both predictable corners and across spans I walk through regularly. A mouthful of spiderweb is not appetizing before breakfast. I keep telling myself, “They eat flies, mosquitoes, and ants. Get over it.” It still feels like an enemy attack.

Lastly, we are hosting an invading munching menagerie – as are most gardeners this time of year. I am extremely jealous of my friend, Carol, who has a beautiful in-town garden – fenced. Carol’s flowers are not fighting deer, raccoons, rabbits, groundhogs, or those nasty little buggers, chipmunks. “Oh, the chippies are so cute,” says every person who has never grown a rose. Fuggedaboudit. They dig in all the planted pots and uproot flowering annuals, squandering my money and stealing my flowering joy.

And the leavings? Animal experts call wildlife poop “scat”. Well, it sure is scattered across my suburban farmette. With scat on the ground, you can’t be hungry when heading out to the blossoms. A downward glance reveals a pile of large licorice jelly beans, a gift from the deer eating my lilies and hosta plants. The clump of Milk Duds means the rabbits are in residence and eating everything else. But we had a visitor this week of the humongous variety. A bear left a large deposit on the back lawn while he enjoyed our all-you-can-eat vegan buffet. From the size of it, the scat was either a large bear or a small elephant.

Among the poop, chipmunk holes, thorns, and bug attacks, it’s still worth the hazard of heading into a garden full of pretty flowers. In my next life, I’ll confine my old-age meandering to one small area: Just three overflowing flowered pots. All fenced. On the deck. No thieves or vandals.

It’ll never happen.

Marcy O’Brien can be reached at Moby.32@hotmail.com.