Stop it.

I am sick and tired of being lectured every damn day about weeds. Stop it. WEEDS. I mean, are you KIDDING ME? You know what I am busy doing when I’m not weeding? Working. Keeping our business operating smoothly. Wracking my brain to create scenarios and budgets to get her house put back together no matter what the association claim amount is. Parenting my child who had her entire summer plan ripped out from under here because we are still in a pandemic and play dates are mostly off the table. Also, sort of feeling like a house wife because I am here every day so laundry and cleaning and most days making a good meal for my family. I am squashing everything I don’t need to focus on which means I am closed for speculation about hybrid models for the school year but open for finding a new contractor to do the restoration work because the one we have been working with is a freaking criminal.

I am super closed for conversations about weeding.

On the 4th of July S and spent 4 hours together pulling all the weeds from the rock landscaping circling our home, as well as all the pavers from the smoking lounge/under the deck. A few times a year we really focus on it and do our best to maintain. Every single day since then I have pulled weeds. Here and there, as they pop up. I have been choosing to hide from the insanity in my home and have dedicated time to weeding the forced garden on the retaining wall. Honestly, it hasn’t ever looked this good.

But our new roommate cannot stop talking about the weeds. It is her obsession of the moment.

I need the weed be gone from the house.

If you just spray the weeds they won’t come back.

I’ve been out there spraying weeds but I can’t get to them all.

PAUSE. You can drive. So get the damn weed killer yourself. But honestly, if you spray them they die but they still need to be pulled so I don’t get the weird extra step. Add to it that the extra work is obviously physically taxing… so just stop it.

I settled in to the the chair on the deck to do some work and she started hollaring for me.

Where is the rake?

Do you know where S put the rake?

He must have moved it. It was on the wall by the clippers and by the shovel. I’ve walked the whole wall. I can’t find it.

So irritating. I jumped up and said I will take a look. At which point I just walked straight to the wall. Where the clippers and the shovel were. “These?” I said. She was delighted, I’m sure because now I was outside standing at the wall with her and a captive audience

The bushes are a weird shape and full of weeds and they need to be attended to. And this is perhaps the 12th or the 13th time they have come up and no we don’t care and no we are absolutely not driving the ridge to the neighbors who have some really beautiful ones and honestly I’m not even listening anymore.

But then she started to point out the HUGE dandelion weed. The biggest one she has ever seen. “That one?” I said. “Huge??”

Well certainly bigger than any dandelion I have ever had in MY garden.

Rude. But it kept going.

I told S..

S needs to..

If S just….

These weeds are so small they are easy to pull. Especially after it rains. You just take a little shovel and dig them out.

OMG. Or just pull them out. Those tiny tiny weeds pull right out. No shovel needed you chronic over-complicator. Also, I would know. Because I have been weeding this garden every day and that is why you can only point to those 2 tiny weeds. Now you’re just being bitchy for no reason. And then I heard just one more “S needs to” statement than I could tolerate. I am team S all day every day and I will fight anyone who feels a need to criticize him, - ESPECIALLY to imply he isn’t doing enough.

“Listen.” I said. “The reason it isn’t done is because S and I don’t garden. We just don’t care. At all”. AND SHE INTERRUPTED ME TO SAY

“It’s not that hard M…..”

No ma’am. My house. My rules.

“The thing is that we just don’t give a shit. If we had a list of 100 things to do gardening would be number 110. We just really REALLY don’t fucking care. At all. Do what you want.”

As if I needed to say that. Doing whatever she wants is how we ended up with that damn perennial garden to begin with.