How To Get Out Of Planting Seeds

My dad’s coming for a visit this next weekend and I thought he would prefer not to hear crunching every time he took a step, so yesterday, house cleaning was my number one priority. I knew something was up when I walked in the kitchen first thing in the morning to make coffee and saw all the rugs in the house in a pile out on the deck. I knew immediately what was happening. There were no words said between us. After nearly 38 years, Dean and I are experts at nonverbal communication. It was seed planting time and Dean thought if he helped me clean, I would help him plant seeds. His eyes shown with hope, mine reflected back mops and brooms. Seven ½ hours of house cleaning later there just wasn’t any time for me to plant seeds.

Today I had to get more creative. I am going to share with you not only how to get out of planting seeds, but I also have an eco-friendly, non-toxic gardening tip for you. This first step isn’t required, but I recommend it. Take a trip to England and fall in love with the electric teakettles which seem to be standard in English B&Bs. Then come home and buy one. Heat up electric teakettles of water and pour that boiling water on the weeds in garden pathways, rock pathways and the beneath-the-deck rocks.

Here’s how you do it. You can hook up an extension cord and place your teakettle near the garden hose and the area you want to clean up. Or, if you missed hot yoga because you were cleaning your house for seven and ½ hours, you can place the teakettle at the top of a set of stairs so you can kill weeds and get in a cardio workout and strengthen your legs all at the same time. Not that you need to do that after you’ve cleaned your house for seven and ½ hours the day before.  Or if you are really crazy, leave the teakettle in the house so you get the optimum workout AND have some spilled water to clean up so you can get in some squats.

The only problem that I have run across in this nifty eco-friendly weed-killing process, is that the water is so cold coming out of the hose that it takes about five or six minutes to heat up the water to boiling, weed-killing temperatures. Staring at a teakettle while you wait for it to boil is almost more annoying and boring than watching the hour glass spin around while you wait for something to happen on your computer, and I get enough of that at work.  You may want to fill your wait time with other activities.  If you are a woman, this multi-tasking will be easy.  If you are a man, don't despair.  You will improve with practice.  But here’s a tip. Don’t get so involved in your “fill activities” that you get back to the teakettle after it's already boiled. You’ll feel you need to wait for it to heat up because it’s already hot, but waiting for a teakettle to boil….after you missed the first boil … is very annoying.

Here are a few suggested ways to fill those five-minute snippts of time. You can “get tough” and dig out the rose bush that has only bloomed about three times in the past 16 years.

I didn't mean to break the shovel handle.....  and okay, I had to ask for help.  I wanted to keep my toes.

You can give your ground cover a haircut so the parsley (which your husband said wouldn’t spread) from the two-years-ago herb bed (this years strawberry bed) will not seed and spread next year.

You can run up and down the deck and basement stairs washing and drying clothes (just in case you need a little more cardio). And then, of course, you can blog about it  (in five minute snippets) because who in their right mind isn’t dying to know how you spend your weekends.

Please heed this warning. Pouring boiling water on weeds may become addictive. You may find yourself still heating and pouring boiling water while the seed planter in your family has hung up his coveralls and is admiring his newly planted seeds. There is no known cure.

Excuse me now while I go pour out teakettle number 31. No, I am not exaggerating.  And no, I'm not finished.

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How To Get Out Of Planting Seeds