The Garden or, Oh, My Back!.

LesbosOnTheCouch by Beth C, one of the Lesbos

I thought that this day wasn't really here. I actually thought this day had no business in my life and wasn't going to come…and yet here it is.

My Love has decided to spruce up the garden with some winter bulbs. She ordered hundreds of them – literally and today we decided to plant! (Actually, today they got here. Today I am home. Today we both had some work we wanted to avoid. Today there was some housework we really wanted to avoid. Tomorrow it is supposed to rain.)

My Love was out there first, sorting the darn things. "Could it be I've overdone it?" she asks. "I mean could I have ordered too many bulbs?"

Never my Love, we can do this and the garden will be even more beautiful! Never mind that the people we rent from seem to be getting restless, pestering our lawyer and wanting all kinds of paperwork and other stuff…A sure sign in my mind that they want us to leave…a sure sign in my Love's mind that they are bored.

I went outside and was given the task of 'turning the soil' - because if we don't turn the soil it won't turn itself. My Love started placing the bulbs were they were meant to be…Do you have any idea how many bulbs are hundreds of bulbs? Well, let me just say that the garden looks like a mole's New Year's Party! I am quite certain that our landlords will not be so thrilled if they show up before the spring, when the winter bulbs are to bloom…We've taken their nice weed infested front yard and hoed and weeded and turned the soil!

Anyway, I hoed… (No kidding, I hoed.) I turned the ground inside out for what, 15 whole minutes. Then I went inside to get some water. Then I went inside to look for something (where did I just put that hoe?) Then I came out and asked my Love some questions. Then I told her that maybe I could do this for another half of an hour. Then I realized that I couldn't, so I started grunting louder and making some suggestions that I knew she wouldn't like…

Soon my Love said that I should go write. She really didn't want me to have a back ache latter…Go in and write….

So here I sit at my computer writing about the day I didn't want to come. The day when my back lasts for forty five minutes of garden work? No, the day that my attention span is so warped that garden work bores me to moan and groan and make dumbass suggestions, happy to have my Love – a full five and one half years younger than me still enthralled with planting bulbs, sure that my advancing age and belly are keeping me inside…

I am such a snake!