Friday, June 15, 2007

I dub thee "Queen of the Bird-Brains"

I’m notorious for coming up with bird-brained schemes for making work easier; schemes that normally result in the work actually being harder.

Last night, I think that had anyone been watching me, A) they would have laughed their ass off and B) they would have officially crowned me Queen of the Bird-Brains!

Let me give you the back story – it’s short, don’t worry. My vegetable garden is in my back yard. My hose is hooked up at the front of the house, (right underneath the only window without a screen). You can also see that there is a fence (you can barely see it, it's at the very back of the lawn on the left side of the picture) that I have to drag the hose around in order to get it near the backyard…only it won’t reach the backyard. It’s about 12 feet too short.
So I have to drag it as far as I can, flip the sprayer upside down and pray that it reaches. I can normally get the front half of the two raised beds, but I miss the very back half and can't reach the gourds, zucchini, squash and pumpkins. I normally end up dragging about 10 buckets of water from the middle of the driveway out to the back yard.
Last night I got the BRILLIANT idea that if I put a trash bag into the wheelbarrow, I could wheel a ton of water out to the garden once and be done with it. Why didn't I just fill the wheelbarrow with water and sidestep the trash bag, you're asking? Well, the wheelbarrow is old and has a few holes in it.

Okay, so there I am by the side of the house, (still in my work clothes and shoes, mind you, because I'm get a little excited when I get a great idea and just go it with right away, wherever I am, however I'm dressed). I have one of those Glad Flexi-Force bags in the wheelbarrow, filling it up like a HUGE water balloon. I tie off the top, smiling and congratulating myself for my genius. I start wheeling it out back and it sloshes a bit, not bad and the sloshed water leaks out through the holes in the wheelbarrow all the way up the driveway. Then I notice little teeny tiny pinpricks of water shooting out of the bag. "It's nothing, it'll make it to the backyard!" I think...and it did, only the water is really sloshing out of the bag the closer I get and it dawns on me that I won't be able to lift this GIANT trash bag water balloon out of the wheelbarrow, nor will I be able to scoop water out of it if I open the bag because it's going to gush all over the place.

At this point, the sloshed water is leaking out the side of the wheelbarrow with force. Again, brilliance hits, I'll just cozy the wheelbarrow up to the side of the raised beds and let the leaking water spill into the bed. Of course, it's going everywhere: in the bed, around the bed, all over where I'm walking. And the wheelbarrow is bulky and I keep slipping in my little black dress shoes, in the mud that has now been created all around the beds. It's just a mess!

Finally, the water in the bag is at a manageable level and I can pick it up out of the wheelbarrow, thinking that the little pinpricks will let me water the garden gently...like a gentle rain storm. Only, there had been so much water in it and so much pressure that apparently the seams of the bag weakened, causing the bottom of the bag to burst...all over the bottom of my shirt, the front of my pants and into my shoes!

Fool that I am, the moment it bursts, I try to salvage some of the water, so I'm running with it to get it into the garden before it completely spills out!

Can you picture it? Me standing in the middle of the raised bed (the one on the right). My hair is pulled up in a twist with the ends spilling out (looking quite nice, I might add). I'm wearing a fabulous green top, wide legged black dress pants that have a thin white strip to them, slightly pointy toed flat black dress shoes. I'm completely soaked and holding a white plastic trash bag with water still leaking out of it, into the dirt at my feet, spraying mud onto my shoes and the hem of my pants.

Note to self: Change before getting involved with gardening projects.
2nd note to self: THINK before you act on one of your bird-brained ideas.
3rd note to self: Buy a longer hose, dammit!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

All I can say is... you are *so* my long lost sister... leading the same bird-brained life on opposite sides of the continent.

Bobby La said...

Great story! Ha ha ha! I laffed and laffed!!!

paula said...

:D
yes buy a longer hose, please.
have a nice week!