Jonathan Coulton has a story he tells in concert about the song Shop Vac. He basically says he was up on his roof using the shop vac to pick up leaves and just really enjoying his private time alone with the shop vac when he realized "When did I become that suburban guy with the shop vac?" After that he said the song pretty much wrote itself.
Today I had a similar moment. I've been meaning to get out and cut some creepers from the two climbing roses that were going in not-useful ways. While I was at it I finally gave up and did some massive slashing at our herb garden section. I had told the landscaper several times not to cut the herbs back because I wanted to try to give the excess to friends, but I finally gave up on that goal. A while back he did cut some of the parsley and I realized it had totally choked out the tarragon, so I should have cut it back more aggressively. And then when I was trying to get to the climbing rose the sage was just blocking the stepping stones and I said "That's it!" Anyway, if you're local and you want something we have in the back yard, just ask - I'm giving up on saving it or trying to push it on people :-)
This trash can is the result. You can see the long rose creepers, but what isn't clear is that about HALF of that full size trash-can is just from one pineapple sage plant. Sucker had gotten about shoulder high on me.
So anyway, I was out there in my special gardening gloves (the climbing roses have thorns!) and my special gardening clogs when I thought to myself "When did I become this gardening old man?" Then I came inside and played Shop Vac to myself.
After some thought I guess this isn't much different than baking bread and cookies for Karin's lunches, and I do that throughout the school year. But somehow the fact that I have gardening paraphernalia, that really struck home for me today.
Today I had a similar moment. I've been meaning to get out and cut some creepers from the two climbing roses that were going in not-useful ways. While I was at it I finally gave up and did some massive slashing at our herb garden section. I had told the landscaper several times not to cut the herbs back because I wanted to try to give the excess to friends, but I finally gave up on that goal. A while back he did cut some of the parsley and I realized it had totally choked out the tarragon, so I should have cut it back more aggressively. And then when I was trying to get to the climbing rose the sage was just blocking the stepping stones and I said "That's it!" Anyway, if you're local and you want something we have in the back yard, just ask - I'm giving up on saving it or trying to push it on people :-)
This trash can is the result. You can see the long rose creepers, but what isn't clear is that about HALF of that full size trash-can is just from one pineapple sage plant. Sucker had gotten about shoulder high on me.
So anyway, I was out there in my special gardening gloves (the climbing roses have thorns!) and my special gardening clogs when I thought to myself "When did I become this gardening old man?" Then I came inside and played Shop Vac to myself.
After some thought I guess this isn't much different than baking bread and cookies for Karin's lunches, and I do that throughout the school year. But somehow the fact that I have gardening paraphernalia, that really struck home for me today.
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Tags: gardening, herbs, suburbia, JonathanCoulton