Crunchy Thoughts

Most families have a story like this. The story that you tell at every get-together or low point in the conversation since it’s guaranteed to liven things up. Our story has now been told to so many people in our circle of friends most everyone knows what I’m talking about when I utter the fateful word . . . Wendy’s.

But for y’all that don’t know, here’s our family’s greatest tale . . .

This was way back in the day, like Elementary School days, and Cathy and I were involved in many after-school activities like dance and piano. We tended to go out to dinner after these things and on this evening the four of us somehow ended up at Wendy’s.

This was also back when Wendy’s had this getup called the Superbar, a mini-smorgasbord that had an array of foods on it that was all-you-could-eat. As an aside, isn’t ‘smorgasbord’ a FANTASTIC word? I’ve never actually had the chance to use it before outside of quoting the Charlotte’s Web movie!

So, enter in my tired parents along with their two hyper girls who are oh-so-glad that piano/dance/school is done for the day and it’s time to eat. Cathy and I get Kids’ Meals to score the awesome toys but Dad is feeling adventurous so he goes for the Superbar.

Over the course of the dinner Dad went up to the bar multiple times to try out all the different foods, some at our behest. This was before the days of extreme germaphobia so the same plate went up every time. He had some spaghetti, some tacos, salad; I wanted to try some horrible concoction of strawberries and banana (ick!) so by the end of dinner that plate had a little bit of everything on it.

Near the end of dinner we were all slowing down, digesting, and discussing our day. Cathy, as usual, had wandered off to the bathroom. Dad was fiddling with her toy from her Kid’s Meal. One of the pieces fell on the floor and he bent down to get it.

The following sequence of events happened in slow motion for Mom and I.

In bending down to get the toy, Dad’s elbow hit the edge of his Superbar plate encrusted with foods from around the world, sending it flipping high into the air, up, up, up . . .

. . . then down, down, down, landing precisely on Dad’s head.

As the food oozed down his eyes and over his ears, the entire restaurant, which was full of patrons, became deathly quiet. All eyes were on our table, looking at this woman, child, and well-dressed man with a button-down shirt and tie sitting there with a mix of spaghetti, tacos, and strawberry gook all over his face. Mom always suspected other people thought she dumped the plate on him.

After a few seconds, a single sound began to emerge in the restaurant. A giggle quickly rising to a chuckle that immediately escalated to an all-out guffaw. It was me, falling to the floor, laughing so hard in a room of completely stunned people. I could barely breathe.

Perhaps my sputtering helped to break the ice. People around the restaurant slowly went back to their own meals over covert looks. Mom reached over and pulled a spaghetti noodle off of Dad’s ear. I finally came to my senses and realized Cathy was still in the bathroom and had missed the whole thing — I ran to get her. I peeped under the stall and said, “You have GOT TO COME SEE DAD!”

By that time Mom was helping him clean up enough so he could at least open his eyes. He cleaned up as best we could and slunk out of that Wendy’s. Mom had to throw away Dad’s shirt — the strawberry stuff just would not come out.

We didn’t eat there again for YEARS.

When people find out that I am a landscape designer by trade, people tend to reply with one of three comments. One is, “Ohh, that must be so much fun!” and, yes, it really can be. Another frequent comment is, “Well, I should get you to help me with my yard/specific plant/right side of driveway/grass problem I’ve been having.” The specific questions can be excellent as long as I know the answer. It makes me feel quite knowledgeable.

The most frequent comment, however, is, “Oh, your yard must look FABULOUS!” Um. Heh. Well, at least I don’t lie and say it’s totally awesome. I own up to it. After three years of living in our house, our poor landscape is a blank slate of topsoil, weeds, and juniper — the only remaining shrub from the builder-installed plantings.

There were shrubs in front of the house when we moved in, but I ripped them out post-haste in preparation to do my own plan. Come on, I am not going to keep a squished-in planting of variegated privet, a.k.a. noxious weed, mixed in with cleyeras and azaleas alternating each other. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, then suddenly it’s years later and we’re now known in the neighborhood as The House With No Plants.

My main problem is because I am landscape designer, I know of so many options that we can go with as far as plants and styles are concerned that I’m feeling indecisive as to where to head. Also, there’s some pressure involved. It does need to look FABULOUS, right?

A few days ago, motivation moved in, just two doors down. I haven’t met the guy so I don’t know for positive, but the big-ass truck with all the logos on it makes me feel pretty positive that it’s the owner to one of the other landscape companies in town. A landscape company that is doing a friend of mine real dirty by claiming some of his work as their own on their website. It’s pretty damn low, actually.

Like I said, I haven’t met the guy (and I’d rather not) so he doesn’t know me nor who I work for, but once he finds out, he’ll just get the silly giggles over my landscaping. Or lack thereof. I will not let this guy get a laugh out of me.

So today, I began to tackle the yard.

Remember the juniper I mentioned I left from the original planting? They were such little bitty things the first few years . . .

. . . but all of a sudden they exploded and had gotten taller than me, not only crowding the right side of the front yard near the wall, but also highlighting the lack of plants elsewhere by their enormity.

I despise juniper in places where you have to touch or prune it, but because of that wall and Lydia’s lack of understanding of gravity I am not about to remove them so I started pruning them back this afternoon. I don’t think I have an allergy to juniper but it certainly causes me to break out into little welts and itch. I suppose that’s what juniper does. Nevertheless, I dived into it, cutting back huge branches of the stuff. As I cut I did some mental planning as to what I shall plant along the front of the house.

After one large cut deep into the mass of shrubs, a mass of wasps came flying out at me. I ran across the front yard, throwing my pruners in the air and cursing all the way. Thankfully, none of them got me. I bet I was a sight to see. The rest of our can of Raid was used up this afternoon.

It took a couple of hours, but I took the height of the junipers down by half. They look a hell of a lot better. I still need to move my perennials away from them or they’ll just continually be crowded out otherwise. The next phase is to get some freakin’ plants.

I wish I had gotten a “before” picture; they were twice as tall, and apparently filled with wasps.

The goal is by Christmas when someone finds out what I do for a living and they reply, “Wow, your yard must be GORGEOUS!” I can respond, “Yeah, it’s totally awesome.”