A massacre story

I have this little flowerbed, next to my house, between the house and the sidewalk/driveway. I started it around a year or so ago. It's pretty large space actually - 4' x 28' and I decided that I would slowly add to it each year as it would cost me thousands in perennials to plan it all in one fell swoop.

I forgot to add the part where I don't have an exceptionally green thumb. You might describe it instead as dirt brown. I get an E for effort if nothing else.

I section off a small part of this 112 square foot space to plant a few things. Salvia, dianthus, a couple hostas and 20 liatris bulbs.

I baby it and baby it, and over time I have a little success. My Salvia blooms and grows! My dianthus pop out tons of little blooms, my hosta struggles along, but my liatris, it grows, but only one gets a bloom.

I was disappointed and determined that I probably planted them too close to the house, with too much shade. Maybe I would move them later.

That did not happen in time, and up they bloomed again this spring. I decided I would let them stay and see what happens. Lo and behold, lots of huge plants grow, I move the struggling hosta (it was too crowded) everything is doing wonderful!

{I did not take this photo... sigh}

I have to add one important tidbit to this story.

No one around my house likes to trim weeds. I dare say, they hate it. With an utter undeniable passion even. Tanner doesn't like it, because he has a hard time starting the trimmer (gas), I CAN'T start it because I'm a wienie. That leaves Gene. Now Gene doesn't like it either, but he does it because no one is left.

A couple weeks ago, I did something that I had never EVER done in my whole lonnnnng life.

I mowed the yard.

Yep.... I've never mowed before. When I was a kid I was FORCED to do 9000 chores, but somehow I never had to mow. I took this with some real pride and just carried on the tradition. The other day tho, I got to thinking about how happy Gene is when he comes home and it's done, and, I wanted to see if I could figure that machine out or not.

I did it!

I only scared myself once. Srsly, I'm so blond sometimes. Somehow with the turn of the wheel, the light, the shadows all the sudden it looked like I ran over a black cat. Add the fuel that my neighbors have 8000 black cats.

I only screamed a *little bit*. It was drowned out by the lawnmower.

So anyway.
:p

The point to this story, is that I did this really cool, nice thing for Gene and he was so happy when he got home. In return, the only thing I asked was for him to do a GOOD JOB trimming up the yard that weekend.

He agreed.

So come Saturday he gets out the trimmer, trims about 12 mins, runs out of line and declares himself done.

Um... yeah.... no.
Yes I was pissed off, why do you ask?

So a couple days later he goes and buys some line, and finishes it up. I believe I was on the phone when this process was going on. He gets done, comes in and asks me to inspect. I go outside to look and this is where it gets ugly.

I check the flower bed because it was BAD THERE (between the 2 flower beds is all grass). yeah, you guessed it. My liatris, which was days away from huge purple spiky blooms... MASSACRED to the ground.

If you think I was pissed off about the trimmer line, just put on your imagination caps.

There's a reason why it's been a good 2-3 weeks I didn't tell this story.

So, I'm hoping that will be a good thing, and next YEAR they will be as big as his head because I'm going to bury it in my flower bed.

Pray for him.

{Dear prosecuting attorney, that was a joke. Lighten up dude.}