It’s 47 degrees out. The last two tomatoes perilously hanging from my Topsy Turvy tomatoe planter are all but frozen to the vine. The plants I painstakingly nurtured throughout the summer peer at me through my sliding deck doors begging to be brought inside. Most of them will sleep and wake next year, but for the few that will perish in the winter cold, I am looking for places in my house to relocate them. The overgrown ivy, which was technically my son’s until he decided to move out and leave her (him?) with me, is the most beautiful and the most un-relocatable. It has a huge lets-pretend-we-are-made-of-stone pot which just fits nowhere. It, unfortunately will perish on the deck. My pussy willow, which bore no pussies this year for some reason, will come back next year so she is on her own. No pussies next year either and she is history! The honeysuckles, of which I have two, were originally purchased to lure hummingbirds. (my husband’s favorite bird) But the few times a hummingbird came near our deck it took Mr. Wonderful so long to hear me announce their arrival, then to get up and go to the door that the bird simply flew off in search of another flower, leaving my husband certain that I had seen a bee instead of a bird. So for most of the day I brought plants in and out, trying not to get wayward soil everywhere. I found homes for two of the plants so far and the plan is to continue for the next few days until all or most of them find a niche in my house. If not I will simply have to let them go to that hot house in the sky.
I sat to watch TV that night and in the darkness of the room and across the light of the TV….there it was….the biggest mosquito I have seen in my life. I jumped up and switched on the light. It was gone. Of course. I tried to convince myself that I really hadn’t seen anything at all but then I heard that buzzing sound that my husband insists means it is a male and males don’t bite. Where does he get these things? Needless to say I wasn’t buying any of that and continued my search. I shut the light hoping to see it buzz past the TV screen again but it didn’t. It was hiding, stalking.. waiting for me to let my guard down, waiting for me to get involved in some trashy reality show and then…wham…an itchy welt! I started feeling bugs on me, scratching and twitching…of course nothing was there but the thought of this sucker….well, sucking on me had me itchy to say the least. The light back on I stood staring into the air waiting for it to fly by. Nothing. Then I went into the kitchen hoping it had decided to go near the Venus Fly Trap plant we had just bought during an outing with the grandkids. The plant stood there with its leaves positioned for the hunt, but no bug ventured near it. I took the plant and brought it with me into the dining room. Armed with my bug eating plant I sat at the dining room table waiting for the mosquito to surface, but instead not one, but two spiders walked across the table in front of me. They were tiny and white and although certainly not menacing enough at this stage of the game, I could tell they were going to find someplace to hide, perhaps behind my new white couch and emerge huge hairy eight legged creatures. They would never be cute word-webbing Charlotte’s. Whack! Problem solved.
I cleaned up the spider guts as the bug-eating plant sat there wondering why I had not offered up the spiders for dessert and since I was near the sink I gave my dog and two windowsill plants some water. The dog came running and so did the mosquito. It flew out of one of the plants I had generously taken the time to reposition in my warm kitchen. I flailed at it with the dish towel but it simply flew into the ceiling fan as the dog barked. I swatted with a newspaper but it just whafted into the dining room as the dog barked and knocked over his water dish. No time to clean up the water, I was hot on the trail now. I immediately regretted not feeding the spider babies to the Fly Trap since I now needed it to do its thing. Lure the damn mosquito over and snatch it up with it’s sticky trap door leaves justifying the $7.99 I paid for it. I followed the little buzzing blood sucker from room to room carrying my plant like Florence nightingale carried her candle. I zig-zagged in and out of rooms and although I was on a mission not to get bitten, I was tired. Having all but given up on the defeated and uninterested Fly Trap I sat down to watch TV. And there she was…flying past the Geico gecko. I followed her with the light off this time as she blindly went into the bathroom. I slammed the door shut and as the dog continued to bark I did the happy dance. Luckily I realized that it could get out under the door so I grabbed for a dish towel to block its exit as the dog circled in the water from the overturned water dish. I put my useless Fly Trap friend back on the windowsill and watched as a spider crawled out of the other relocated plant. I took both ungrateful plants and threw them back outside on the deck where they could now freeze to death for all I cared. I could finally relax. I cleaned up the water, made a cup of tea and went to the bathroom....oh shit!
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