Ticked…

Well today did not go as I had planned.  My day was supposed to go like this (after coffee, breakfast and wishing the Mom’s a Happy Mother’s Day) I was going to plant my dahlia bulbs in the containers on the deck, cover myself in Deep Words Off and return to working on my bee garden.  Well, my container somehow never made it to the deck, so I had to get out my hand cart (cause the thing weighted a ton full of nice wet dirt) and roll it through the yard to the back deck.  I then proceeded to look like a sumo wrestler squatting down to heft the thing up two steps at a time.  I did of course achieve my goal and got my dahlias planted (sadly not all survived the over wintering process but the ones that did have already sprouted!).
Next I was headed to plant and went to spray my DWO and uh-oh empty. Not good, I dug around in the cabinet and nope none there.  I eked out what I could and went on out into the big bad backyard. To where I find the husband looking at the gazebo parts. Now long ago we had a lovely gazebo on our deck but we took it down because we built a all seasons room. It has been sitting sadly against the shed waiting to be placed.  I want it behind the pond on the end where the waterfall is and we’ve gone round and round about it.  I think he’s finally coming round to my way of thinking though, especially now that I’ve convinced him that we (thanks in part to his dad) can build a small deck to put it on instead of digging and leveling out the area.  So he asked me to help him clean off the several years worth of leaves and sticks to uncover it and I did. 

We hefted up the one section, was it ever heavy and wet! He did some calculating and we talked about ways to get it to the other side of the yard.  I suggested a gazebo building party, but I’m not sure he took me seriously.  I’ll happily feed a host of people if they are willing to help heft these two sections across the yard!  The husband then informed me he was going to work on the lattice and since I knew he was going to ask we went over what he could and could not stomp and hack in the flower bed.  I figured better safe than sorry and started pulling weeds in that area.  He went in the house to gather tools and what not and I was working away.  That’s when I saw it, a nasty, blood sucking creepy crawling, disease carrying tick!  It was making it’s way up my arm in short order!  I grabbed it and promptly chopped it in half with my pruners.  (Now if you know me, you know I hate to kill anything but I draw the line at ticks, mosquitoes and now stink bugs!)  Finding another on my shoe and a third on the back of my neck was enough to send me into the house, clothes stripped and left in the washer (door closed so nothing could escape) and directly into a hot shower where I scrubbed off at least one layer of skin.  Now before you go thinking I’m insane, I’ve had a bulls eye from a tick bite emblaze my arm, I was sick for weeks while the antibiotics beat that horrible tick spit out of my system. It is not a journey I want to take again, thanks but no.  If I find a tick on me, as in it’s been eating and I don’t know how long I go straight to my doctor!
So the husband was left to his own devices as I had no plans to be back outside till I can coat myself in Ode’ da Deep Woods Off. He worked along and got all the lattice up and it looks very nice!

Me, well I spent the rest of the day doing laundry and sucking up stink bugs, what fun!