Whacker, whacked

I wanted to call this Thoughts While Weed-Whacking, but thought doesn't really enter into the process. Weed-Whacking Rambles. Random Bullets of Weed-Whacking. Have You Whacked a Weed Today? Nope, nothing doing.

One thing is certain: Robert Frost never would have written any lyrical poems about mowing if he'd used a weed-whacker instead of a scythe. Nothing contemplative or lyrical or pretty about weed-whacking. You go out and whack some weeds. Sometimes they whack back, tossing bits of gooey green glop onto your goggles or smacking you right in the lips with a stone. The process of whacking and being whacked engenders not one iota of poetry.

I weed-whacked around the end of the driveway and on the steep slopes where the driveway approaches the bridge, and I was pleased to see that some of our plantings have recovered from last summer's flood. Four yuccas are back in force and a mess of crown vetch is blooming, albeit not exactly where it was planted. I found plenty of weeds to whack, many of them bound tightly together by wild morning glory vines. If morning glories were money, we'd be in Tahiti right now. Not to mention creeping charlie, pokeweed, and jewel weed--and is that poison ivy over there? Yes! A bumper crop!

I steer clear of the poison ivy. The worst poison ivy outbreak I ever suffered was a result of overzealous weed-whacking, and I don't relish the thought of sitting in a room in Louisville eight hours a day next week reading student essays while trying not to scratch my poison ivy. Let someone else deal with the poison ivy--I've got plenty of other weeds to whack. I only hope they don't whack back.