Tiptoe Through The Tulips

(Are you old enough to remember Tiny Tim singing that song? If you are, You're Welcome, because now it's stuck in your head. Just a little service I provide.)

Well, we're going to do it. We signed the contract and put down the deposit, and landscaping is going to happen in our yard. OMG.

We hired a designer, and she totally was fabulous as she walked around our yard, and then she came up with a totally fabulous design, with a ton of fabulous hardscaping and ornamental trees, and we spent last weekend visiting the garden center to look at the plants we didn't recognize and OMG it's going to be totally fabulous.

They are scheduled to start in about a week, and one of the first things to be done is to go around and mark the plants we already have that we want to save. Since we've not done much gardening this season (because hey--we're going to get it Professionally Landscaped!), the "garden" is really rather more of "weeds." So I figured, since I had some time and energy to use up, I would go out and clear away some of the 4 foot tall weeds and find the plants that we might want to keep.

And I found a lot of cool stuff! I found three different roses, and some astilbe, and liatris, and a green and white striped hosta that had gotten lost. Other things we should keep--or at least not just throw away--include two different colors of monarda, some baptista, a neglected and yet still living clematis.

Things we do not want to keep? Ground hornets.

Yes, once again I ventured into a neglected portion of the yard and scared up a nest of ground hornets. The first indication that I found them was the excruciating pain in my ankle, where one of them landed and stung me, followed immediately by further stings on my feet, wrist, shoulder, back and leg. These are determined little suckers, too--unlike bees that sting and then fall off and die, these buggers cling and keep stinging.

So there I am, dancing around flapping my arms trying to dislodge stinging hornets--which doesn't work, by the way, but it's an instinctual reaction. So I got to look like an idiot while simultaneously not getting rid of any of the hornets. I had to flick them off my body, and now I am sitting inside, safely away from the remnants of the attack force, waiting for the burning sensation to abate.

So, maybe I'll just let the professionals take the job on from here.