By the Itching of My Thumbs

Have you ever had one of those moments when you do something and almost immediately your mind catches up with your actions and you think, "Oh, oh.....that wasn't wise!"  I'm thinking this morning was one of those moments.

It started out great.  The morning dawned cool...even cold by my standards.  This was perfect weather to get outside and do some weeding, especially since we were going to have company arriving tomorrow.  The front flowerbed was in bad need of attention and since the Commander didn't seem to be stepping up to the plate, I figured I'd better do it so that our guests didn't need to be issued pith helmets to make it to the front door.

I dressed in a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, put on work gloves and headed outside.  I hate yard work but the cool breeze made it tolerable and soon the front bed looked pretty good.  But did I stop there? Oh no, I was on a roll.

I decided to go around to the side of the house and trim back the butterfly bushes to encourage them to bulk up their trunks.  I trimmed the sides of the bushes, too so that my coleus plants could be seen between each bush.  I was working my way down the side to the end where our lilac bush was and was almost finished when I trimmed some shoots and grabbed the fallen ones and pulled them out onto the yard.  I pulled, dropped, and pushed my glasses up onto my nose.  Then I took a closer look at what I had just dropped onto the yard.  Crikey!  "Leaves of three, let it be!"

Oh, no....this was almost exactly where the poison oak had gotten me two years ago.  That was a real disaster which had one of my arms swollen up like a balloon, festering sores over my arm and chest, and ended with a visit to the emergency room and a shot in the backside after 3 weeks of misery.  After that little joyride my doctor had forbidden me to do yard work since I was obviously now quite sensitized to poison plants.  I didn't do any yard work last year.  But I'm more apt to cave in due to feeling shamed by the state of our yard than the Commander and the thought of company seeing a tangled mess was what had me outside today.

I dropped everything and fled inside.  The first thing I did was scrub my hands and face with warm soapy water.  The next thing I did was get out of my work clothes and take a long shower, sudsing everything down with soap.  The clothes went into the wash (and I did NOT touch them with my hands.  I used a towel to pick them up and put them in the wash.)

Now I'm praying that I was quick enough that this time I will have escaped the consequences.  Darn, I don't want to have to go through all of the "seeping swamp monster" stuff again.  And as for all the debris on the side of the yard?  I showed it to the Commander and told him "Have at it!"  You can fool me once.  You can fool me twice.  But a third time?  Shame on me!