All around the Pacific Northwest (where Miss Crankypants resides), people are emerging from their burrows. The dark days of hibernation behind them, everyone Miss CP knows is getting a little behind in the garden. Literally. And she has her husband to thank for it.
Physical therapists and common sense dictate that you really ought to bend your knees while working that cold clay-bound soil. But how many of us remember to actually do this? And how many of us can still actually bend our knees?
Every spring, Miss Cranky learns the hard way.
She gets most of last year’s dirt clods off her tastefully decorated mud boots. She rummages through the medicine cabinet for sunscreen, which she has not used during the long rainy winter. She finds a hat, sunglasses and steals her hubby’s overalls. With pitchfork in hand, Miss Crankypants looks just like the farmer dude in the American Gothic painting. She’s all set!
Miss Cranky attacks her garden with zeal, gleefully dispatching slugs and snails that want to eat her tender seedlings. Die evil slug! Die! Unfortunately, this slug has at least a bazillion close relatives. But Miss CP is indefatigable as a Slug Warrior. She divides and conquers, all right, but she forgets to stoop.
An errant dandelion has the nerve to poke its head up while Miss CP is on patrol. She gets so excited that she folds from the waist (or what would be her waist if she still had one), knees locked, hands grabbing for the dandy’s tap root. “Yer a goner!” she growls.
Why oh why do people think it’s funny to photograph their wives in this most compromising of positions? People like Miss Crank’s husband, who thinks it funny to see his wife demonstrating her still-limber physique by touching her toes.
She bends. He shoots. She gasps. He laughs. She straightens. He runs.
Die, evil picture! Die!
Is it any wonder that a certain guy is not going to be allowed back in bed (gardens or otherwise) for a while? Miss Crankypants has a new rule: No cameras in the garden, no matter how much of a behind is showing. And no, he’s not getting the overalls back.
Happy gardening!
True story–this year I get ready for weed patrol. New neon green gardening gloves, sunhat, large garden waste can at hand. I scoff at hubby’s ridiculous notion that we should hire someone to weed. Ha! I am woman. Have I not done this for many many years? I pull weeds and prune rose bushes for two hours but I am only about half done when my energy begins to wane. I refuse to acknowledge this. I am not old. I push myself onward but I know I should stop. I grab a clump of weeds and give it all my strength. It breaks. I fall backward onto the concrete deck–hit my tailbone, then my head, bracing with my right hand. So a small weeding job that we could have spent less than $50 on, becomes a visit to Urgent Care with X-rays and a hefty price tag of $600. So glad no one had a camera at the ready at that awkward moment when i lay on the cement crying, “I want my Mama.”
Be careful of weeds, Miss CP. They may look harmless, but they are up to no good.
Oh dear Catherine, Miss Cranky is appalled at the bad behavior of some weeds. For $600 smackers you could start a pogrom against those weeds. Do take care and Miss Crankypants will sit on an icepack in sympathy! ~Linda aka Miss CP