Gravel. Mercy.

Ah, gardening. There was a time when I believed gardening meant scarved, hatted women with baskets over their arms. Now I believe gardening means sweat, blisters, dirty fingernails. Clouds of dust. And gravel. Or is that particular just to Wazoo?

I'm often bewildered at the attempts at improvement attempted by the former owners of Wazoo Farm. It surely didn't take them long to slap up faux-wood siding all over their living room, and it didn't take me long to detach it again (one piece literally fell off when I touched it with a crowbar). BUT it took a very long time to scrape off the glue, sand the walls, resurface the plaster, and paint. (Through the open window I tossed siding and plaster dust, and it was during my foray with sanding that a woman dropped by to invite me to her Baptist church. Removing my mask, coated with a thick layer of white dust, I extended my hand as she looked at me somewhat apprehensively and then beat a fairly quick retreat. Have I mentioned how often we are proselytized at Wazoo? So far we've been invited by the Baptists, Itinerant Politicians, Mormons, Pizza Evangelists, and Jehovah's Witnesses.)

Today, thinking in despair about the blackberries and "The Fairy" roses that have been sweltering ever since I received them a week ago in the mail, I doggedly dragged my feet back to the scene of procrastination to wrestle with the gravel.

I picture the former owners, laying the dastardly landscape fabric, blithely drowning a perfectly good bed with gallons of sharp, grey gravel. And then you may picture me, gloved, first with shovel and then on my hands and knees, filling wheelbarrow and plastic pots full of gravel which I then redeposit under the stairs. This monotony, this dust, this picture when I close my eyes: silver gravel on black landscape fabric. Ah. If only they'd thought about it before they dumped. (The other day, I considered that instead of toting the gravel down the stairs, I could just wheelbarrow it down. For a few stairs I was in control, but then, as any dolt could have predicted, the wheelbarrow took on a power of its own and careened down the hill. At least it careened without me attached.)

So now, to my list of BAD THINGS HOMEOWNERS SHOULD NEVER, EVER DO:

Fake siding
Linoleum
Wallpaper
Wallpaper borders
Textured Paint
Swimming Pools, any kind
Popcorn Ceilings

I have added: Gravel. Please, do not give into the temptation to cover huge expanses with low-maintenance gravel. Think of those who come after you, and have mercy.


NEVER NEVER NEVER HAVE MERCY!