Growth of a small honeydo

Last week, Karen’s voice drifted into the house, “Mark, can you help me with something for five minutes?”

Butler, who sleeps with his workboots laced up, was already out the door singing, “Whistle while you work.” Bagman’s spread-eagled moan came from under a pillow. I was somewhere in between, as usual.

It was small task. She was trimming out some dead branches in the Azalea bushes in a six by three bed near the heat pumps on the side of the house where my neighbor Steve had recently installed a French drain. Some of the branches were too thick for her to cut with the long handled clipper thing. I enjoyed exhibiting my muscles and cutting the bigger branches.

We also cut out the vine-like weeds. She had to point them out because I still can’t figure out what defines a weed from a plant. What makes one variety of green leafy life good and another bad? Seems like a form of discrimination, but I hack away when told.

It wasn’t a five minute job but still only 30 minutes or so and we were done. Except…

Now two of the Azaleas looked really scrawny and sick, so Karen asked, “Would you like to dig that one out completely?”

Getting a bit smart-assed about it, I answered, “If you want me to dig it out, I certainly will but don’t ask me if I would LIKE to do it.”

So the five minute clip was starting to grow and I was getting twinges of premonition. I fetched the shovel and the red-chopper-thingy. I know it has a name…adz?...but it has a tiny axe-like shape on one side of the business end and a kind of hoe-on-steroids shape on the other. And it’s not really red anymore either since it has chopped a lot of roots in the past. I chop at some more, work up a sweat and eventually pull out first one…then, of course, two…of the dying azaleas.

I mop my brow (not with an actual mop, of course) and my heart sinks when I glance at Karen and see that look that says, “I wonder if I dare to ask him something more?”

“Would you mind,” she says – avoiding using the word “like” – if we took out the other two azaleas and planted all new bushes in here. I grunt my assent. The sun is getting higher and I fetch a headband because sweat is now pouring into my eyes. Digging up healthy azaleas is considerably harder than dead ones. Chop, dig, chop, dig, pull, chop, dig, pry, pull, chop, pull…The big azalea, with complete root system, is too heavy to put in the wheelbarrow so I drag it to the road while Karen cheers me on with words such as, “Be careful not to hurt the grass!”

I’m still hoping that this five minute…now three hour task…has an end point to it. Of course, I need to turn the soil now so she can plant something new. The good news is that the soil is only three inches deep. The bad news is that underneath it is all clay and – “Don’t you think we need to get rid of all that clay?”

I resist answering, “I didn’t think we needed to trim dead branches in the beginning.” Instead I fetch the wheelbarrow and start shoveling heavy, damp clay, and wheeling it down to the artificial pond (which looks like a real pond)…except it is deep and drops off fast. I dump clay from the bank in big wheelbarrow fulls. I lose count after 294. Somewhere around the 600^th load, I lose my grip and the wheelbarrow rolls down the bank and into the pond. I hold one handle for dear life and follow it in, sliding up to my clavicles in mud, clay, and tepid pond scum.

There are alligators…I’ve posted pictures…but I never worry about them like my neighbors do. Except when walking Sally. They have big mouths but small brains (sort of like myself when I blurt out things at work). Alligators see moving objects and make only one decision…small enough to eat, or big enough to run from. They leave me alone while I struggle to retrieve the wheelbarrow and, in the process, decide the hole is big enough and I’m done for the day.

The worst is over. All that remains is to put in new dirt so Karen can plant. Thankfully, thunderstorms arrive and I have an excuse to go back inside although by now I’ve forgotten what I was doing before I went out for five minutes to clip a couple of branches. But I’m almost done and can finish up early on Sunday.

Right.

Sunday morning, we go outside and find that all of the rain from the thunderstorm is now sitting in the hole. I have successfully created a new artificial pond. Even my neighbor, Steve, is standing there admiring it. He cheers me on with words such as, “Looks like you have a real problem there.”

We stand around, scratching our heads, and staring at 600 wheelbarrows full of brown water where clay used to be. We finally figure that before we decided to clip a couple of branches, the azalea roots had been drinking much of the water and the clay base had been high enough so gravity made the rest run off into the yard.

The solution now seems to be to fill at least half the hole back up with clay…I may even need to buy some since I’ve successfully thrown on the free stuff in the pond. Then I will have to dig a trench ten feet out and connect it to Steve’s recently installed French drain.

“While you’re doing that,” Karen suggests, “would you like to connect the downspouts from our gutters?”

“I’d love to,” I answer. “But first there are two or three dead branches I should cut from the azalea over near the storage shed.”

Is there a doctor in the house?

Oh my God, I think I may have contracted hypochondria.

Saturday morning, I woke up with fatigue, a dry mouth and a slightly sore back. When I stood up, I felt momentarily light-headed. When I went into the kitchen, the idea of eating Cheerios was not appealing. I narrowed my self-diagnosis down to heart attack, esophageal cancer (which I’ve recently added to my on-going long-range early warning system for reasons most of you will guess), and kidney failure.

This was confirmed for me a few minutes later when Karen reminded me that we were planning to spend the day at my sister-in-law’s house weeding the yard, planting bushes, and putting out pine straw.

I took one large bite of Cheerios and threw the rest of the bowl away. Karen asked me if I was feeling all right. I said I was fine but made sure that I paused for a very long time, pressed the small of my back, winced, stood up extremely slowly while swaying a little bit so she would ask, “Are you sure?”

“I’m not sure,” I said going over and lying on the couch.

“Do we need to take you to the hospital?” she asked.

“Not yet,” I said. “Give me a few minutes,” I said, shutting my eyes.

Yes, I think I may have contracted hypochondria. I have become more susceptible to hypochondria recently for several reasons. A: We’ve been watching lots of old episodes of “House” recently. (If you don’t know the show, it is about a weird genius of a doctor who deals with strange weird diseases). B: I am at an age when many of my friends both in real life and on Blogspot are dealing with life-threatening illnesses. And C: the weather in South Carolina is becoming hot and humid which makes yard work less fun.

Driving over to my sister-in-laws house, my symptoms worsened. I became convinced that I could not eat and I managed to discover several other places where I had pain, including one in my chest area which made the diagnosis of heart attack more probable. Unloading tools from the car, I added sweats to the symptom list, ignoring the fact that it was 85 degrees and humid.

Several members of my sister-in-law’s family were there a big lunch was served before the work party began. I was afraid to eat much since I decided that if I had trouble swallowing, the diagnosis of esophageal cancer might gain over heart attack. My sister-in-law is not a nurse but went to nursing school for awhile and is the family's resident expert. She wanted to take my blood pressure.

I declined but, after not eating either breakfast or lunch, the nausea increased which convinced me it was a heart attack and I needed to lie down.

I slept all afternoon while wife, sister-in-law, and cousins worked in the yard. When we returned home in the evening, I went to bed and had trouble falling asleep. Must be some kind of insomnia, probably based on some rare tropical disease. Swine flu?

Sunday, I moved as slowly as possible all day so as not to stress my cardio-vascular system.

This morning I have to go to work where I sit behind a desk in an air conditioned office and drink coffee. At the moment I have no symptoms that I can find except for an intense guilt about not having done anything all weekend except whine.

I think I have hypochondria. Of course, it could just be laziness, but I would hate to think I am that manipulative. So tonight, I will come home and watch House and see if I can scare myself some more.

Meanwhile, I think that Karen is considering that the best course of medical action might be to administer three quick kicks in the butt.