The sun was shining, a cool breeze was blowing across the yard, birds singing from the trees and I? Scowling at a stump.
How did this begin? Well the two previous blogs explained the Why, Where, and What. Today was the how.
To begin I donned my gardening clothes, grabbed my water bottle, set up the stroller in a shady area, and then spent nearly 20 minutes trying to put sunscreen on a squirmy 8 month old, the end result being that both he and I, our clothes, our stove, our floor, his highchair, and 2 dish towels were safe from the sun.
We head outside and I set him up to play quietly. Then i turned to my foe. I wanted to see how much of a wiggle i could get out of the stump and proceed to learn a valuable lesson.
Incorrect footwear+Shorts+no gloves+a prickly multi branched death bush=A poor decision.
I stepped onto a branch to apply pressure. That ending in the branch stabbing through my soft shoe and launching me sideways into the other protruding branches. Ouch.
Time to dig. I spend the next hour and a half tediously digging down and around the base, slowly but surely breaking through each and every root. I'm dirty, bleeding, scowling at a bush. I get my shovel good and deep and that is when my child has had enough.
He decided playtime was over and used his very impressive vocal chords to alert my surrounding neighbors, most of whom come out to their porches to watch/judge me. 🤦♀️ I call my mom for backup. As I sit and hold my son, now calm in my arms, my brother (who was working on my basement with my husband and dad), comes outside and gets ready to leave. He stops for a few minutes to say hi to his nephew and that is when he notices the bush.
Like me, my brother despises these bushes and has experience getting rid of them. My mother arrives and holds my son, I go to start my tedious work again when my brother informs me this bush needs to go. He uses his steel toed shoes and strength to stand on the limbs and bend them, loosening their hold ever so slightly. Then he disappears for a few minutes. He emerges with an electric hand saw, my husband and father in tow. He gives me a powerful speech on how this bushes time has come and it needs to go now! It is time to work together! Enthused I grab onto the branches with bare hands, using the pain of them getting cut, to fuel my rage, I twist and pull, my brother on his stomach sawing underneath, my father jumps into the fray! We push, we pull, we tug with all our might, her roots let go, AND SHE FALLS BEFORE ME!
MUHAHAHHAAHAHAH 😈
IN TRIUMPH I AMAZON YELL AS I SLOWLY DRAG THE DEFEATED CARCASS ACROSS MY LAWN TO ITS FALLEN SOLIDERS.
I pound my chest like a cave woman and throw it down onto the pile, paying no mind to the still judgemental look of my neighbors.
I return to the hole and gaze down with satisfaction coursing through my veins.
I Have Won.
