I’ve used bamboo stakes in my garden for over twenty years, and I’ve been injured many a time.  One would think I’d be more careful as a result, but the other day I forgot about being cautious in the garden.  I noticed some dead periwinkle leaves and dove for them, but in my zeal I forgot about a bunch of Echinacea I’ve staked.

Wham!  I slammed my right eyebrow right onto the top of the three foot high stake with some good force as I was on my way down to the periwinkle.  I immediately felt relief I’d missed my eye, though the whole area felt kind of bad.

By that evening I saw bright lights on the edges of my vision plus I saw a few black dots in the eye that hadn’t been there before.  I trudged off to the ophthalmologist who diagnosed a vitreous detachment.  Nothing serious, as it would’ve happened with age anyway, but the blow just hurried it up by a decade or two.

You’d never think gardening would be such a hazardous thing to do.  However it’s not only dangerous it’s damned expensive as well.

The other day I was pondering the front of my deck, looking at the straggly, struggling phlox and said that’s it, this is all coming out of here right now.  I decided I wanted to match the top and bottom gardens, so drove off to Art Knapps for some Echinacea plants.

I got a bunch of those, some soil and peat moss, then spent a few hours tearing out the phlox, preparing the area and planting the Echinacea.  Something wasn’t looking right, and I realized the bed should be ringed with the same rocks used in the lower garden.

I got 50 rocks and threw them in the wheelbarrow, put those around the edges and stood back.  Now that’s more like it.  However as I said to mom, I was close to hospitalization by the end of my little project.  Another way the garden is hazardous: complete body breakdown from overuse.

As I was feeling bad about aging and how the old body breaks down, I remembered something that cheered me up.  Next July I’ll have 30% off every Tuesday at Value Village and all of the thrift stores due to being 60.  Isn’t that fantastic?

Those two old dudes were at Value Village again the other day.  You know the ones I told you about who look at stuff with magnifying glasses and who told me they sell on EBay.  That day I found a beautiful scarf, made by Etro Milano, with the tags from the store still on it for $7.

I’ve been collecting used CD’s too, now that I have a working sound system and may want to have a bit of mood music playing in the background when I entertain.  I’m determined to find a bar car somewhere, a la Mad Men, and cover it with bottles of booze.  Then my living room will be all woman cave-ish and I can block out the garden’s vile demands for beautification with music and licquor.