I had a small end-of-the-season BBQ at my house for the Zoka clan last night. Good times. I had a few extra hours yesterday afternoon, and needed to trim the vines that grow up the railing below my deck - they grow like crazy. But once I get going on chores I usually start getting more done than I'd planned. I've got a long history of fighting the morning glory on my property, and it's mostly been a losing proposition. But, it's been so dry around here I noticed even the morning glory was starting to look unhealthy. So I decided to launch a surprise Morning Glory Counter Insurgency Operation. Morning glory is a worthy opponent, but I knew I had to capitalize on this weakness. In past episodes of this conflict, I've adopted primarily a Shock and Awe approach, agressively pulling out the maximum possible amount of vines while trying to upset the other plants as little as possible. It makes me feel very good about myself but I never plan for the aftermath and, well, the morning glory just regroups behind my back and comes back even stronger, but even less centralized. I've even started to suspect the other plants of harboring and otherwise aiding the morning glory, especially the, um, bushes. It seems like the morning glory would be bad for them - they don't act like they like it - but it seems to grow the fastest in their area. I'm keeping an eye on them, something is fishy there.
Some people have said "you know, the Shock and Awe" approach doesn't seem to work so well, maybe you should try figuring out why the morning glory comes back so fast and do something about that. On the surface, this seems constructive but then you realize these people must simply love the morning glory and hate nice landscaping. It's the only plausible explanation. Sometimes they'll slip and say "at least it has those white flowers", which totally gives it away. They must be trying to trick me, so I'm staying the Shock and Awe course, thank you very much.
So I get my MP3 player and I start ripping out morning glory like crazy. It's pretty productive and I make good inroads. The morning glory doesn't even seem to have a reaction - I must have caught it off guard. I ripped out most of what I could see or easily get to, so I figure I'm done for a while. Mission Accomplished.
But I also realized there were some other weeds that had taken a foothold so I started ripping those out as well. You know, since they might be providing a haven for more morning glory. And - bam - I feel a shot in my right forearm and I see a bee rolling off into the grass. When I was about 4, I ran through an underground yellow jacket nest and got stung like 30-something times. Not good. And so after that it was unknown if I would end up being mostly immune if I got stung again or, you know, mostly dead. So I had to have those little bee-sting kits around, etc. I got stung again in the hand when I was about 12. My hand swelled a bit but not much else happened. I got stung on the tricep in college too, now that I think about it. You really don't expect to find bees in your bed, but I rolled over on one. Anyway, I don't remember either of those hurting like this one. But good news is not much happened. My arm hurts about 2 or 3 inches around where I got stung but nothing major. In any case, that'll teach me to do yardwork.