Grass plucking pastime worries him
I just hope the neighbors didn’t see her.
To say my lovely wife enjoys her garden is the same as saying I like to eat (all you have to do is look at me to see the veracity of that statement).
But recently, I think she carried things just a bit too far. And, frankly, she has me worried.
My outdoor job is that of grass cutting around our home. Most of our yard contains the same species of green — except for one patch in the backyard near one of her flower gardens.
Mixed in among the normal grass is some type of growth that sends up slender single blades. Their growth rate is about five times that of the surrounding flora, which means that in between cuttings, this part of the yard looks very unkempt. While the rest of the grass grows at about the same rate, these single shoots reach skyward making the whole yard look like it is in desperate need of a trim.
The blades aren’t close together but scattered in a patch.
“What kind of grass is that?” my wife said recently.
“I have no idea. I’m not even sure it’s really grass,” I replied.
“Is it a weed,” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Well,” she said, “I’m going to get rid of it.”
I thought she was going to spray it with some kind of weed killer. Or maybe dig it out with a shovel.
I was wrong on both counts.
Returning home from work one day, my obviously exhausted wife smiled and said, “Well, I’m getting rid of it.”
Having forgotten all about her peeve I asked what are you getting rid of?
“That grass or weed or whatever it is,” she said.
“Oh, that. How are you doing it?”
“I’m pulling it out by the root,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I replied, “What did you just say?”
“I’m pulling it out by the root, one blade at a time.”
Dumbfounded, I repeated what she had just said.
“You mean you are down of the ground picking that stuff out one blade at a time,” I said incredulously.
“Well, how else am I going to make sure I get it all out,” she responded.
Picking grass out one shoot at a time is not my idea of a normal pastime. If I saw someone else doing it, I would question whether or not they had begun playing the hockey of life with a warped puck.
For some reason, considering my wife, the project sounded somewhat reasonable.
Over the course of several days, she kneeled at that patch of grass and carefully plucked each blade, wiggling it out of the ground root and all, depositing them in a nearby pile.
I couldn’t believe it. She did this when the heat and humidity were in the stratosphere.
A few days later, she described this process to one of our friends who is familiar with all sorts of plants and animals. “It sounds like it’s Johnson grass,” he said, adding that the only way to really get rid of it is to pull it out by the root.
Vindicated, my wife turned to me and said, “See. I’m not crazy after all.”
“I never said you were,” I replied.
“But I don’t know what other people are going to think when I tell this story,” I said.
“That’s all right,” she said. “After all, I’m married to you.”
Have a good day.
James Pletcher Jr. is HeraldStandard.com business editor. He can be reached at 724-439-7571 or by email at jpletcher@heraldstandard.com.