Slim Randles'  Home Country

Doctor makes yard care easier

[June 06, 2009]  Doc was used to making life-and-death decisions, of course, having birthed and buried a great many of us in the valley. But now he had to decide which would live and which would die.

And it was fun.

He stood there in his knee-deep-in-growth yard, looking down at all of this year's entries in The Great Lottery of Life. Then he started with his narrow and pointed shovel and whacked out the ones with stickers.

This had attracted a crowd, of course, and in this town, a crowd consists of more than one spectator. Doc had two: Dud and Anita Campbell.

"Sticker ones first. Right, Doc?" Anita asked.

"Yep," Doc said. "That's an easy call. They always go first. I don't like stickers."

The town was getting used to Doc's laissez faire format of gardening. This came about after years of clinical trials in which Doc watered and fertilized some plants to encourage them and continually whacked others to change their minds. The result, he said, was a combination of frustration and fatigue.

To cure that, he let whatever cared to grow in his yard ... well, to grow there. If he didn't like the plant, he whacked it. If the plants he did like started to turn brown, he watered them. No fertilizer. No planting. No weeding except for the annual spring whack.

This was the spring whack, when Doc decided whether to leave a bunch of wild grass this year, or to turn toward the more prosaic look.

"How about the wild mustard?" Dud asked. "It gets kinda pretty in August."

Doc nodded. "I think I'll leave it this year and whack the dandelions. They both have yellow blossoms, but I feel like having a taller bunch of plants this year."

The shovel struck deep into dandelion dens, smiting them hip and thigh. Another life-and-death decision by our favorite doctor.

Brought to you by Abe's Motel and Fly Shop. See them at www.sanjuanriver.com.

[Text from file received from Slim Randles]