Did I once say that the poison ivy plant is quite pretty with its glossy red daintily serrated leaves and graceful vines? Well I take it back. It is an awful insidious sprout and I have vowed to expunge it from my yard. I stalk (no pun intended) around with my organic weed killer poised and I squirt anything that looks tri-foiled (foil as in leaf) and a little bit glossy. Unfortunately there is a four-leafed creeper (perhaps virginia) which mingles with the dreaded PI and sometimes they both get the blast. The foam that’s left behind after I’ve doused the noxious weed is white and watery and I’ve told the LF (Lucy Factor) that it is dog vomit which is the only way to ensure that she won’t touch it. There aren’t many things she won’t touch. She is being exceptionally cruel to yellow slugs these days. She sort of kneads them until they stick to her palms and then she flings her hands around wildly trying to dislodge them as if they are bits of masking tape. They seem to survive but need a few minutes rest in a quiet and shady spot, when I finally peel them off her hot fingers. She de-segments millipedes which is one of the cruelest things I’ve ever seen and is often mean to moths. How does one convince a toddler to unclench her fist?
Anyway back to the PI. I have been cleaning up the yard and I trimmed hedges and whacked down big branches and reformatted sprawling plant growth with this nifty machine which looked like an electric carving knife mixed with a chain saw, and then I hauled these piles off into the woods and somewhere along the way I rubbed up against those three leaves of red and developed a rash across both forearms, my neck, my collarbone and in between five or six of my fingers. The itch goes on and on, waking to furious intensity always in the middle of the night, and although I’ve slathered myself with lotions, sometimes it just feels so good to scratch, a bone-deep scratch. That’s what I’ve been doing instead of writing. Showering and soaking in oatmeal baths and applying lotions and scratching.
Sometimes the only indication you get that bears are around is the number of eviscerated garbage cans hurled across the road, the ribbons of wet paper and empty plastic take-out containers, and the mounds of poop. Although they scare the bejesus out of me, I’d much rather see the animal in question, rather than the results of their midnight feasting every Monday morning.
Getting back to my revision now.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////