The Scene In Which I Battle Inanimate Objects

Frequently, I do battle with common household items. These battles can take many forms, but they most often occur when I'm 1) trying to use said item, or 2) trying to move on/around/through said item without injuring myself in some way (more on that later) or 3) trying to do something that really should just be easy.

Today was kind of a 3, with a little bit of 2 mixed in.

Today I battled....da dum....da dum....da dum da dum da dum....THE YARD.

More specifically, the dastardly, gorgeous, purple salvia plants.

Back story. Last year, tired of the tiny yard's tiny flower beds and tiny plants that I took care of with a tiny watering can and moved around with a tiny shovel when I got bored, I WENT BIG. Off to Lowe's with a Visa and a plan, my neighbor and I combined our shared front yard, eliminated about half the grass, made beds, planted a ton of plants including purple salvia, and called it a day.

And it's been just lovely. The plants are blooming, the birds are chirping, the butterflies are visiting. In fact, about all I've done so far this year is pull weeds and put in a couple hostas.

Lulled by a false sense of security, I picked up some container plants today (tomatos, peppers, trailing pansy and dahlia) for the front porch. I prepped, transferred, potted, watered and staked without so much as a second thought. Almost as an afterthought, it occured to me: "Hmmm. I ought to stake up those salvia plants. They're falling too far forward and they're going to kill the phlox underneath them. Plus, they're totally ruining the asthetic. Yep, I'll just stake 'em up. Reeeeeal quick."

You can see where this was going. Those damned plants were not going to be staked and they were going to fight me every inch of the way.

To be fair, they'd kind of had it with me. Some of them were planted years ago and had endured a root-rocking move to a different spot in the garden each summer, jostling for the best positioning in the sun. Others were favorites of Finnigan's, and by favorites, I mean his favorites to "mark"- thus making them the favorites of other dogs that passed by.

So they fought. Fat bumblebees lazily circled my head as I gathered back the purple blooms. Ants, crawling on the stems lying on the ground, bit my arms. One plant in particular adamantly refused to be discreetly staked and had to be divided into triplet stakes, which had to be tied to each other for support. In another section of the garden, the ground LITERALLY rejected the stakes- breaking them in half as I tried to push them in.

If you're a visual person, picture me crouched on the ground, hair flying about my face, dripping with sweat as a I try to push a bamboo rod into the ground, baggy gardening shorts getting more and more indecent by the minute, holding a clump of purple salvia back with my elbow, twine clenched in my teeth, muttering: "F--k You Salvia, I OWN you, B---h!!"

In the end, the salvia was staked. It isn't pretty, and woe to any dog who jumps onto the plant in front to wee because they're going to get splinters from the broken stakes, but still, victory is victory, and today it was MINE.

Inanimate Objects 0, Becky 1!