{"id":1517,"date":"2012-10-18T03:00:45","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T07:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/?p=1517"},"modified":"2014-02-09T15:10:43","modified_gmt":"2014-02-09T20:10:43","slug":"aaaagh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/2012\/10\/18\/aaaagh\/","title":{"rendered":"Aaaagh!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The unbelievable gardening accident that ended well.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I hope.<\/p>\n

I spent some time weeding one of my flower beds yesterday.\u00a0 It’s finally gotten cool enough that a person can stand being outside more than absolutely necessary.\u00a0 So, I’ve been catching up on my weeding, a little at a time, over the past week.<\/p>\n

I have these flower beds\u2014although why I’m calling them flower beds when only 2 of them have actual flowers is something we can examine later.\u00a0 Anyway, I have these flower beds.\u00a0 There are about 7 of them.\u00a0 Two feet wide or so.\u00a0 Running along the length of various portions of the house, with concrete borders.<\/p>\n

A while back, we bought some large river rock to use as\u2014what?\u2014a sort of ground cover.\u00a0 In lieu of mulch.\u00a0 I’ll say this for the river rock.\u00a0 It makes it easy to see what’s a weed and what isn’t.\u00a0 Because there’s not much else planted in these beds.<\/p>\n

We have some larger, shrub-like plants, a vinca, a ton of canna lilies, a couple of spider lilies and a hydrangea.\u00a0 In the back, there’s a begonia, in a pot, sitting on top of the rocks, and a flowering shade plant whose name I cannot remember and which has yet to grow more than an inch or show any sign of flowering.\u00a0 Anything else green that pokes its head up through the rocks is a weed.<\/p>\n

I like that.\u00a0 Knowledge is not required.\u00a0 See a green thing.\u00a0 Pull it up.<\/p>\n

But yesterday, this lack of knowledge could have had some disastrous consequences for a baby lizard.<\/p>\n

What happened is this.<\/p>\n

I was weeding.\u00a0 Specifically, I was pulling up dollar weed.\u00a0 This is something of a losing battle.\u00a0 In a defined area, however, it is possible to eliminate visible signs for a while.\u00a0 If you are careful, you can also pull up a fair length of the subterranean runners.\u00a0 They are tubular and white.<\/p>\n

So, when I found a small round white ball, I thought it had something to do with the dollar weed.\u00a0 I picked it up.\u00a0 And then I dropped it.\u00a0 By accident.<\/p>\n

Imagine my surprise at seeing a wet and slimy baby lizard clinging to a rock after the round white ball\u2014otherwise known as an egg\u2014broke open.<\/p>\n

Imagine my horror at realizing I had just played midwife to a lizard\u2014and caused a premature delivery.<\/p>\n

Imagine my relief when the slimy little thing dried out and scuttled away.<\/p>\n

I’m not enamored of lizards, but they are harmless and amusing, and I don’t want to kill them if they can manage to stay outside\u2014which, so far, most of them have.\u00a0 Even if they come inside, I try to have the MotH catch and release.\u00a0 (Haven’t quite gotten there myself.\u00a0 Maybe someday.)<\/p>\n

So, I’m thankful that the lizard seemed <\/em>okay after our mutual shocking experience.<\/p>\n

Next time I see one of those small white balls, I’m leaving it strictly alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The unbelievable gardening accident that ended well. I hope. I spent some time weeding one of my flower beds yesterday.\u00a0 It’s finally gotten cool enough that a person can stand being outside more than absolutely necessary.\u00a0 So, I’ve been catching up on my weeding, a little at a time, over the past week. I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[37,60,82],"class_list":["post-1517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-casa-lagarto","tag-thankful-thursdays","tag-lizards","tag-gardening"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1517"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3217,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517\/revisions\/3217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}