I dream of gardens.
Beautiful lush gardens with weeping willows and waterfalls where it doesn’t matter that geologically speaking I technically live in a desert. I want foxgloves and ferns, roses and rhododendrons, daisies and daffodils, bluebells and….and…damn, I’m out.
Also having no place in the fantasy garden is the fact that I live on a 6000 square foot lot. There is exactly enough room for a modest Japanese maple and small water feature. I can have a weeping willow, or I can have a bedroom for our oldest son. So we did what parents everywhere do when faced with these difficult choices. We tossed a coin.
Despite the lack of fecund soil or acreage, we do manage to get a little of the petaly stuff to grow. As do our neighbors. And we’re not above luring flowers into our yard with promises of sweets, sun, flavored water and attendants that will feed them peeled grapes. (Hey, the boy had to do something to earn the bedroom.)
So we do manage to get some charming pops of color into the space which should, theoretically, quench my thirst for quaint cottage gardens and give me hours of enjoyment while sipping cosmopolitans on my deck.
But there’s one more problem. Allow me to illustrate.
Contrasted with:
Bees (which is a category that describes any flying, stinging insect) cause me to break out in hives, a cold sweat, and Broadway show tunes. Bees (which is a category that includes any unidentified insect that may or may not sting but is guilty until proven innocent) inspire in me a speed which I have not yet equaled in any vehicle not powered by a combustion engine. Bees (which is a category that includes any insect that I can’t see that makes an audible buzzing sound) manage to drive me indoors despite the fact that I out-mass ALL THE BEES IN MY YARD AT ONCE by a factor of about a zillion to one.
And no. I am not allergic. Although I once lied to a police officer about that when I thought the alternative was finding myself arrested for being stupid.
After 42 years of bee phobia I can manage the occasional flyby of a honey-bee, or shoo away a yellowjacket at a picnic table.
But that’s as far as it goes, people. You can’t ask more of me than that. I can’t handle it! AND YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!
This problem is heightened by the carpenter bees that have developed a chemical addiction to our bleeding hearts. (Or whatever that flower is in the first picture. I know it’s not a bleeding heart, I just don’t know what it is. If anyone knows, please tell me so I can get the bees into the correct treatment program.) The carpenter bees are the insect world’s Hell’s Angels, complete with shiny black attire, obnoxiously loud engines, and majorly aggressive attitude. Although the few times I ever hung out with Hell’s Angels they were pretty cool, and more than one of them had teddy bears strapped to the backs of their hogs. So really, the bees are worse.
It’s spring, the flowers are blooming, all should be loveliness and cucumber sandwiches.
And I’m standing safely behind a window giving a paper wasp the hairy eyeball.
– 10 Martha Points for me. Irrational fears don’t get me ahead.
Phooey.
This post linked to “Home Is…” @ The Reluctant Entertainer
In Pursuit of Martha Points 