World War Leaf

I am not sure you are aware, but I am in this quasi-war with leaves.  I rake them all up, bag them, put them to the curb and then somehow - miraculously! - they return the next day.  This is usually due to the fact that my neighbors are not so...um...how shall I put this...particular/crazy/type-A/neurotic about their leaf pick up.

Now this does not mean all of my neighbors.  In fact, the neighbors on either side of me are quite good about picking up their leaves.  However, when you go beyond that, we have some serious leaf failure going on.

This is compounded by the fact that my ratty neighborhood has several vacant houses and I will tell you right now that there is no way on earth that those owners/the bank/etc. are coming around to pick up leaves, exterminate rats, eliminate the thousand newspapers collecting on the front porch, monitor copper pipe robbers, etc.  It is a crying shame.

So these lazies are off in happy Out of Ratlandia Land, forgetting that they ever lived here.  This is not so cute for the neighborhood.  Not really improving our look, not really helping out with house values. 

Thus, the leaves blow.  They pile up, kill the vacant house's grass, get all wet and grossy, and then barf across my lawn.  It is not a nice sight.  Especially for Ms. Neurotic Leaf Warrior.

Yesterday I raked again.  It was the third time this week of raking.  The lovely blood blister on my thumb was nearly healing and callousing up from the previous attempts to clear the lawn. 

That was when I decided to do it.  Yes, dear peeps, I decided to march myself down the street with my lawnmower and get rid of their leaves.  I must admit, I did not this to be a charitable neighbor.  This was pure shock and awe in Leaf War.  Now, you also must know that I initiated my attempt while my dear hubby was at the store looking a muzzleloader (because deer hunting just isn't long enough with bow and gun season).  

Why?  

Obvs!  It would have been way harder to sneak down the block with a lawnmower if he were here!  

Duh!

Well, after an hour of this (and my hubby driving up and asking, "What on earth are you doing?!"), it was finished. 

Leaves - 3
Ms. Daisy - 4

Bring it.

Peace, love, and rake it up,
Ms. Daisy

Rake Your Leaves, Bozo

My dear peeps,

I have been so busy, as you can perhaps guess with my absence from writing.  With what, you may ask? 

Let me put it to you exactly like this.  I have been ultra-busy writing plethoras of love letters to my neighbors whose main life goal is to never ever ever ever ever rake their leaves, especially after I raked mine for three hours.  This is especially wonderful as yesterday the winds were only 60 mph and I could layer the entire back and front yard with the deciduous litter they have spread my way.

What do to thank neighbors like this, really?
 

Obviously I was thinking of a few things.

First, perhaps I would submit a secret letter to them that says, "Please pick up your disgusting leaves, bozo.  Love, Hardworking Caring Neighbor"

Then I thought that they would probs notice it was me since I have been prone to stand out in the front yard glaring at them with red laser beams coming out of my eyeballs shooting at their faces, shaking my fist at the sky like Palpatine getting zapped into a crispy wrinkle by Mace Windu.  That might be a giveaway.  Wouldn't want to take it out of the DL flava, now.

So then I thought maybe I could just bag up all of their leaves that they allowed to blow upon my lawn and march them over, walk to their fenced backyard and dump said leaves upsidedown in a wild display of floppy armage while screaming, "How do you like that?!  How do you like it all over your lawn, lazy pants?!"  After the initial satisfaction that this would clearly cause, I seemed to ponder a slight flaw and see that I would be exactly in the same place I am now since the dears wouldn't bother about raking it up anyway and it would all just end up in my front yard again anyway.

The only real thank you could really come in the form of a brown flaming paper bag.

(Don't put it out with your boots, Ted!)

Yeah, well, I wish.  I guess this is just the fodder that bounces to and fro as personal entertainment in my mind as I once again go outside and rake up five more lawn bags.

Peace, love, and I guess the T-shirt with the "Stop Being A Lazy Slob and Get Out Here and Rake" might be a bit over the top, too, (sigh!)
Ms. Daisy

An Incredible Display of Incompetence: Trugreen = True Buffoonery

The scene: a spelling bee world championship.  
The players: three homeschooler finalists and a panel of judges.

Judge #1:  Please spell incompetence. 

The very definition of incompetence.

Homeschooler #1: Might you use it in a sentence, please?
Judge #1: The company Trugreen lawncare shows nothing but extreme and wild incompetence in all of its transactions.
Homeschooler #1:  Could you please tell me the definition?
Judge #2:  Let me explain it to you, sonny - it's a little story and it goes something like this...

One day a salesman came to my house.  He was a Trugreen salesman.  Now we already had a lawncare service - an all organic service that used nitrogen on our lawn and made it nice and healthy and not made of World War II bomb products.  But Mr. Trugreen Salesman promised us that they too had a wonderful nitrogen organic treatment that they would be happy to apply to our lawn - for the fraction of the price!

Well, alrighty.  I suppose we could give it a try.  We're always looking for ways to save money when we can, right?

Mr. Trugreen Sprayer Man comes, yes, he has a snaggle tooth and a molester mustache and looks at women like they are grass-fed T-bone steaks, and yes, besides spraying toxic chemicals all day long, he also chain smokes.  Well, this should prove to be interesting, no?

Spray #1 happens.  Nitrogen applied.  Hooray.

Spray #2 happens.  I talk to Snaggle Tooth and he says he "added a little extra for me", some grub control.  I wonder if my hubby ordered that, and go promptly inside to discuss my horror at such a thing as it is 100% pure toxins.  Hubby says he did not order it.  How did we get it then?

Call the company.  They don't know.  

Spray #3 happens.  Snaggle tooth has sprayed toxic chemicals.  You know, the kind that I would boycott with signs on the side of the road in a protest?  I call the company, concerned, perplexed, and freaking out.  They have no idea how this happened.

We are now totally fed up.  The grass is dead.  We have chemicals on our lawn.  MY lawn.  You know, the organic, hippie, compost bin, permaculture gardener, non-toxic to the all the way max lawn people?  And crazysauce sprayed WWII bombs on it.  My blood begins to boil.

I call with flamboyant words to share that express the very depths of my raw emotion, and although it is not the fault of the woman on the phone (I repeat to her a few times) I am beyond irate and consider making up new swear* words just for the occasion.

Hubby calls and tells them we have to break up with them and we'd like a refund for killing our grass, spraying it with death chemicals and not giving us the service that we were promised.  They agree.

They mail a check for the wrong amount.  A much smaller amount than it ought to have been.

We call again to straighten it out.  We ask to speak to the manager five times.  Manager never calls back (still hasn't).

We cancel the account and try to put it behind us.

Until today.

Oh no.  Please no.  What is this?  I drive up to my house.  There is one of those little plastic signs in the corner of my grass.  Oh sweet sandwiches and cheese, for all that is good and decent, please tell me that is NOT a "I just sprayed your lawn with a carcinogenic, mutagenic, toxic chemical of death again" sign.

It is.

Phone call.  Hi customer service person, I am calling because I have a tiny little (uber-sarcastic tone) problem.  I have cancelled my service with your company because they are total nincompoop buffoons who keep spraying toxic chemicals when I ordered organic nitrogen and for some reason YOUR SNAGGLETOOTH MOLESTER came back and sprayed my lawn today.  I am going to lose my entire mind right now.

Customer Service Rep: Um, I am not sure how this happened.  Your account is closed.

Me: How on earth is it possible that Mo Lester sprayed my lawn again today?  Is this for real?  Not only did you NOT give me what I wanted, but you gave me something I would never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever want in one zillion million billion trillion years.  THREE TIMES.

Customer Service Rep:  I don't know.

Me: For the love of all that is good and decent, please send a personal message to Mo Lester that if he comes back to my property, I am going to go ape.  Have you processed our refund?

Customer Service Rep: Um...it looks like they submitted a request.

Me: Thanks.

Homeschooler #1: I-n-c-o-m-p-e-t-e-n-c-e.  Incompetence.

Judge #1:  Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.

Peace, love and for your homework, please discuss at what point it is ethical to put landmines in your front lawn,
Ms. Daisy

*p.s. When I say swear words, I do mean words like "stinky blinky waggle baggle moo muffin!"  Just in case you thought I was a sailor.

Karma? And shoveling. And more shoveling.

Not only does my dear darling hubby sometimes call me a nerd, but he also calls me Scrooge around Christmas.  Oh how we love one another!

Actually, I don't really take any offense at the name since I find the consumerism and the total spaztastic-ism that surrounds Christmas in the United States more than appalling.  Why would he call me that, anyway?  Oh, yes.  That.  Well.  That's because I take the Christmas tree down on December 26th before 10:00 a.m.  It is called CLEANING UP, peeps.  You don't keep your birthday party decorations up for a week after the party has ended, do you?  Heavens no.  Or at least, if you do, invite me over and I will clean it up for you.

So, anyway.  We went to millions of Christmas parties and finally we gobbled up someone's germs and the whole house came down with a cold, each one falling 12 hours after the previous sick member.  We were sad little sick dominoes.  

This leads to New Year's Eve.  We were too sick to go out (even though we actually had a babysitter to allow us to do so - what a horrid waste!).  Instead, we spent a lovely time watching a PBS cooking lineup that included Jacques Pepin (he is awesomesauce, in case you didn't know) and then segwayed into the atrocious America's Test Kitchen (which I spent half of the time yelling at the TV for their use of vegetable oil - WHO DOES THAT - and other such despicable practices like using plastic while cooking: really?  But, I suppose, it is aptly named.).  Then we went to bed in the middle of Martha Bakes.  Way to ring in that New Year, baby.

New Year's Day was full of more excitement that included sick people laying around in pajamas with blankets and going in and out of partially comatose states through the day and watching an absolutely disgusting amount of snow barf onto the lawns, sidewalks, driveways and every imaginable living thing on the face of the earth outside.  It was a nightmare.  Not the sick part.  The snow part.  I hate snow.  (The person who invented the song, "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow..." was CLEARLY DERANGED and in need of a solid thunk on the noggin.)

But even more than my hatred for snow is my hatred for having my driveway and sidewalk covered in any material whatsoever. You may think me lawn obsessed!  If it were even remotely socially acceptable, you would find me standing outside with a Rambo-like stance and a blowtorch in the fall igniting any foreign bit that dared to dance its way onto my property.

Around 8:00 p.m. we heard a knock at the door (alarming because we weren't expecting anyone and secondly because of how totally AWESOME everyone looked with sideways hair and blankets wrapped around us like we were pathetic little bums - and secondly alarming because usually in our hood that means you betta grab yo' Glock and answer by yelling, "Who dat!?" in a loud and irritated tone without opening the door.  Don't fret, I didn't do that, hubby answered the door, and I simply ran for the .45 just in case.  Easy peasy.).  It was a teenage boy who wanted to shovel for us.  This was good since we were so pathetic that we hadn't been able to shovel all day.  So we agreed and I spent the next half hour peeking spy-fully through miniblinds at his shoveling.

Yeaaaah.  If you know me, you know that I am slightly particular on all things that have to do with my house and/or property.  Martha Stewart is one of my heroes.  I organize for people.  I don't go to bed unless everything is perfectly clean and if the littles leave stuff out, it must be because they want it to go live in the trash for the rest of its life.  When I was a teacher, I may have put tape marks on the ground where the first desk in each row were supposed to line up and the students weren't dismissed until their rows were in perfect alignment.

So it was through these eyes that I looked outside and saw the job of the teenage boy.  I agree, yes, I may be particular, but even if you were the least particular person in the entire world, this would have been a doozy.  It was bad.  There were mohawks of stripes of snow all over the place and he had dumped piles of snow against the house on  the bricks.  Where will that go when it melts?  Oh yeah, into the basement.  Great idea.  He didn't shovel in front of the garage and didn't move things out of the way to shovel the gigantic piles that had accumulated near them.  Basically, a 7 year-old would have done better.

I gave my husband the face.  You know.  The "This Isn't Going To Work" face.  My more sensitive husband went out and asked him to move the piles away from the house.  Then he came back five minutes later asking for money and then he left.  (Yes, we did pay him.  And then I said if someone EVER comes asking to shovel our stuff again, it would be better for everyone if we just slam the door in their face.  Not literally, of course.  Naw, up in this hood, you just "accidentally" let your pit bull out of the screen door and all solicitations cease indefinitely.)

Leaving the driveway in this state could not be borne.  I took my sick pajama-ed self and suited up for the blizzard of 2014.  I shoveled for an hour to clean it up.  I went to bed so glad that it was all fixed.  I even turned off the lights to stare at the marvelous work.  I literally thought to myself, "Now THAT'S something you can enjoy.  Something that isn't like the dishes where you wait three hours and there's another meal to mess it all up!  No!  This right here, this is lasting success!"

The next morning, I opened the window shades to find four more inches of snow.

FOILED!

I suited up again.  My back was breaking, my nose was sniffling, my throat was scratching, but I was going to remove this nastiness.

After an hour, I finished.

At lunch, there were 3 more inches out there.

For real?  Are you even kidding me right now?

The third time of shoveling included me inventing new curses to bring down upon the menacing snowflakes whose entire life purpose was nothing more than to taunt my life off.

Now, I don't believe in karma, but if you did, and you believed in special Christmas karma, and if you believed that if you took your Christmas tree down too soon that it would come get you in a bad way...well, then.  I suppose I am your prime example.

Bah humbug.

Peace, love and please someone invent driveway hairdryers: I WILL PAY YOU,
Ms. Daisy

For the Love of Edging

As I mentioned in my last post, spring has sprung here in the fabulous midwest.  I began my celebrations by hanging the laundry out on the whirly (as I do it, I find it is even more wonderful if you pretend you are June Cleaver - picture yourself in an amazing dress and heels, of course).  Yesterday completed the commencement ceremony of spring with the blessed first time of bringing out my favorite power tool of all time - the edger.

Please tell me you have an edger.

Please.

Seriously.

You do get excused from having an edger if you live on a farm, though.  Not quite sure you may have enough cement to edge grass away from, so you get a pass, especially because you are a farmer and farmers are AWESOME.

If you are a regular ol' suburb or city-dweller, you get no pass.  You get your booty over to your favorite lawn and garden store and get yourself one of those fantastic machines.  And if you've got yours hiding in your garage or shed, WHAT IN THE HECK ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!

The satisfaction of dislodging the piles of dirt that have naughtily slid themselves over throughout the winter (due to much snowy precipitation and general mischeviousness) is so great and amazing the first time through that it is almost as amazing as lets say, dandy popping (the physical removal of dandelions by that one hand tool that has a stick thingy that looks like a snake tongue at the end, I don't know it's real name, I just call it a dandy popper.), or watching in horrorful fascination some weird youtube video of a dude getting a one inch chunk of ear wax yanked out of his ear (yeah, totally just gave you a glimpse into the weirdness here), or  peeling large amounts of nail polish off at once like it used to when you were five years old  (did you think I was going to say peeling skin?  Well, I didn't.  Not this time, anyway.).  It's THAT kind of good.  Perhaps you just crossed it off of your list inherently because you totally just thought I lost my mind in making the previous comparisions, but I implore you to substitute in your own great and grand concoctions of imagination instead.  You won't be disappointed.

Once, a long time ago, I thought that I might design my own t-shirt that I would wear while edging.  It would say "You Can Do It, Too" on the front and then have an icon of an edger on the back.  I thought it would inspire neighbors to do their own.  Soon, our neighborhood would be a natural beauty neighborhood filled with edged lawns.  People would come from miles around - nay, distant countries - to see what life could be like living in edged perfection, not a blade of grass nastily hanging over the side mixing with cement territory anywhere, not very unlike that utterly horrifying bit of hair that hangs over some men's ears that makes you want to run at them with scissors to alleviate them from their disgusting ailment.

(You can imagine with all these ideas of perfection what I think of people who color outside of the lines!  Sick!)

So please, for the love of all that is decent, if you're one of those people with the six inches of soil hanging over the border of your sidewalk/driveway, please do something.  Immediately.  Drastically.  Bring it into perfection with the best invention sinced unsliced bread, (yes, I said "unsliced") the beloved perfecterizer, the edger.

And now, to go stare at the lines it made in the dirt because it brings me such joy.

Peace, love and keep it in line,
Ms. Daisy

Could it be? Is it possible?

If you know anything about the seasons in the midwest of the United States, you know that in some parts, winter lasts about 5 or 6 months, summer lasts about 3, fall lasts about 2 and a half months and spring lasts about four minutes.  Today is the first day it really feels like spring and elated does not even begin to describe my sentiment.  

Oh!  The wonder of spring!  Things growing, turning green, the smell of the ground being thawed out with rain (or continual torrential downpour for 5 days, which is what it was last week), birds chirping and returning back to the frigid tundra (my special nickname for the midwest), and best of all - it is the gateway to the best season of all: hot weather season!  (Some people call it "summer".)

(Which is why fall is the WORST season of all since it represents the death of the warm weather season and the gateway into frigid 6-month horrors.  This is not even to mention the tree litter that cascades and douses your lawn as if it were some kind of dump truck on the expressway with its top off, just so you can rake up 45 5-foot-tall yard bags worth of the junk.)

It is the season for lawns.  For edging (OH!  GLORY!  HOW I'VE MISSED YOU!), weed whipping, mowing, (I really show get a cow for this, but since my back yard is about the size of your neighbor's Honda civic, I guess it might not work out), for grading your neighbor's lawns!  (Oh wait.  No.  Just admire the good ones.)

And gardening!  (Seriously, how could anyone NOT love spring?!)  I am especially excited as my new issue of Urban Farm just came today.  

What are you looking forward to?  What are you growing in your garden?  Do you have a cow to cut your grass for you or do you do it via mower?

Hooray!  Spring!  

Peace, love and green stuff everywhere!
Ms. Daisy

Saran Wrapping a Lawn: Concrete Evidence of Insanity

Let's talk about how to make your neighbors think that you are absolutely, certifiably, and completely nutso in the head-o.

What?  Do I have experience in this area?  Funny you should mention it, because, why YES, I DO!

Let me begin by saying that I love a good lawn.  I suppose I love a good garden even more (UK-ers - lawn = garden; garden = the place you grow flowers and veggies).  After I watched that video from that lady from the U.K. (speaking of which!), I would one day consider turning my lawn into a food plot, but for now, I'm still growing grass.

Anyway.  My grass is HORRIBLE.  This makes me sad.  I try to fix it but I refuse to put bomb salad on it (chemical fertilizer.  You do know that's where they got that from, right?  No, literally.  It's the same stuff that's in bombs.  After the second World War, they had to figure out what to do with the ultracrap and saw it killed weeds and greened up your grass real nicey-nice like.)  

So the main problem is my dog (speaking of ultracrap).  My dog has this special problem.  She...how shall I say it...has liquid poo six times a day.  It kills grass.  Nearly instantly.  So the backyard has a myriad of brown spots.  The front yard is utterly murdered because of the large tree that sucks up all of the water instead of sharing it with the grass.  

One thing is a must - even though I may have a crunchy brown lawn, I insist on having it edged.  Nothing is worse than when the grass hangs over the crack of the sidewalk or driveway.  It's like a kid who has hair so long it's hanging over his ears in an unsightly manner.  (I can't stand that either.)  It lets me be in control of something in the horrid world of crispy crunch lawn.

Did you just tell me to water it?  Oh my goodness, you are so smart.  I can't bear to have that high of a water bill, though, so thanks anyway.

So instead I've done something else.

Go ahead, it's time to get worried.

So my brother was an engineer in his past life and rubbed shoulders with other such folk.  They like nothing more than to do crazy experiments on things to figure out what works best.  One of his buddies did such an experiment on his lawn.  He got plastic cups and filled them with different soils, put them in different areas (shade, sun, half, etc.), did different stuff with them.  He found that the best growing one was when it had its own personal greenhouse.  What does this look like?

It looks like saran wrap on your lawn pinned down with toothpicks.

So that's what I did.  

You basically dig up some ground, add your seed and water it up and then cover over it with your fancy schmancy handy dandy plastic wrap.  

Now you're thinking, hmmm, that's kind of interesting.

What my neighbors were thinking was, "SHE'S kind of interesting.  She's pinning saran wrap onto her grass.  I knew she was weird, and now I have empirical evidence."

They slow down and stare and elbow the passenger in the car.  The people walking their dogs stop and scratch their heads.  I am nearly as special as an Ohioan.

Oh, but soon, very soon, I am hoping for little green sprouts.  

So my dog can kill them.

Insanity is really hard to get rid of.  But for now, you'll have to excuse me, I'm going to go check on my saran wrapped lawn.