Revolution!
The whole situation could have been avoided had the lawn mowing company showed up before the land owned by our HOA (Home Owners Association) turned into a field of dandelions. Just saying.
My neighbor and partner in crime, Betty Bop (her name has been changed to protect the innocent) emailed several requests to our current reigning president Petunia (I'd like to call her something not so nice here, but I run a clean blog and this is as good as I can get) inquiring about fertilizing the lawns and per say, when we could expect a lawn service to show up and take care of the hay field we were growing on the property. Betty Bop had company coming and was afraid her relatives might be lost in the weeds between her house and the parking lot.
Petunia then emailed Betty Bop back promising to speak immediately to our lawn service for their opinion on the fertilizer. So, about an hour later Betty Bop received an email response. Petunia had sent out some made-up email to someone named Bob asking about fertilizing. The thing here is folks, WE HAD NO LAWN SERVICE UNDER CONTRACT and just who Bob was...well we still are scratching our heads. In addition, the email was addressed to Petunia and Betty Bop. No Bob. It quickly occurred to Betty Bop and me that perhaps the lawn wasn't the only thing in the HOA in need of a little fertilizer.
Thus, last Sunday evening Betty Bop and I passed several texts messages back and forth across the street while watching Naked and Afraid and designed a plan. We were fed up with the lawn not being mowed and the landscaping needing work. Enough was enough. We decided to to throw caution to the wind and take on Petunia and the HOA board. Permission be damned. We were taking matters into our own hands. Literally.
Let the record show that Mr. Quilter Cook and I moved to a condo to AVOID any kind of lawn work. We aren't lazy, but frankly we were done with spending all of our weekends working in the yard and repairing houses way back in 2005, when we moved to Indy.
When we moved into our current abode, we envisioned empty nester summer nights sipping cocktails with friends and neighbors on the deck. We daydreamed of watching contracted lawn and snow removal services to take care of things for us. I mean, that's what we pay for every month in HOA fees, correct? I will say the snow removal service has been phenomenal the last two years with nicely plowed parking areas, driveways and hand shoveled service right up to our front door. Yep. So, why we can't just get those guys for the warm season to mow and take care of things? My guess is that they don't do mowing. It happens.
Ok, back to the story.
On Monday, Betty Bop and I gathered all the gardening tools we both had on hand. It wasn't much, folks. I mean, why keep them? I have to say that good ole Betty Bop gets a couple of extra points for having a thistle puller thingy. My prize tool was a kids rake. Hey, now..before you laugh it's not the leaf kind. It's the heavy prong kind for gardening. I have a five foot garden in the front of my condo. I needed a little tool. I got one and it works great. If I ever become a grandparent, I'll pull it out of the garage like a rabbit out of a hat and announce "Look! Grandma bought this just for YOU!" Hey, it might work. Then again, maybe Alexa will be a real house robot and do the landscaping for us. If she was HOA board approved of course...
Four huge commercial gardens and six days later I will say I hope to GOD I never have to work that hard again in my lifetime. Listen, I'm an INDOOR GIRL. I like to bake cookies, sew little quilts and read books. Digging in the dirt really isn't my gig. But, we did it.
It should be mentioned here that Betty Bop recently had a knee replacement and I'm not too graceful when it comes to manual labor. I wasn't made for it. Plus, neither of us are spring chickens. By the end of the first day after 7 hours, I could hardly walk. I moaned and groaned all the way up the stair steps to the shower. It was all I could do to call Pizza Hut for supper delivery. Poor Mr. Quilter Cook. He was so worried about me that he had to wave an open container of ground Starbucks coffee under my nose to make sure I was conscious.
I finished the final garden this morning. I was out working by 6:30 am, let me tell you. I raked, pulled weeds and dug holes to plant eight lilly of the valley clumps of yuck. Eww. After that, I watered all of the four huge gardens down along with Betty Bop's condo of flower fun. She and her hubby left on vacation this am. So, I'm on the clock till next Sunday. Pray for rain!
She'll get her turn when Mr. Quilter Cook and I hit the road in September for the lighthouse gig for two weeks. I don't know if I've blogged about that. I'll have to check. Maybe I'll just repost my magazine column. Readers seemed to enjoy it.
I should mention that several members of the HOA have remarked about how nice everything looks now. One lady even dropped by and donated all of those lillies of the valley. Super. Thanks. Yes, I'd be happy to plant them. The same lady and I chopped down a tree together a few days ago. I held the branch steady while she chopped away with her small axe trying to balance a lit cigarette in her mouth at the same time. I was thankful I came away unscathed. Free help is hard to find.
So, what about Petunia you ask? Well, I've spotted her slowly making her rounds in her oversized black SUV up and down the street. We all live on a long cul-du-sac and it's impossible not to see EVERYONE coming and going.
I wonder if she's still waiting to hear from Bob?
Rhonda
