Barefoot Garden requires shoes

I love summer, I love sunshine and I have taken an interest to the garden in our new fenced in oasis. Every summer I start out filling my pots with pretty flowers and planting new perennials and annuals in the garden. When we first moved in I started calling it the barefoot garden, because I don't really like to wear shoes. Especially when winter is over and it is warm enough to feel that sweet Virginia dirt in between your toes. Then at some point I decide I have to put shoes on because something triggers this necessity. This year it is no different. I made it a whole month in the barefoot garden with no shoes, until yesterday. I generally don't find a lot in my garden except plants and the occasional presents that Abbey has left me, I thought my mom was lucky when she found a bottle of bourbon that she had buried for good weather for some event. (it really works) This kind of finding would have me popping a top not putting shoes on. Anyway as I said before we have recently put a fence up around our back yard and found out some of our neighbor's property was actually ours, so we fenced that in also. Barret and I found this very exciting as we could expand our garden! So yesterday I went out and decided I was going to clean out the part that we recently took back. Our neighbor had planted vegetables there last year so I planned on finding those remains. Yeah, not so much. I started raking and immediately came across a condom wrapper. This made me think about that wonderful article about the police cracking down on the hooker services in alleys. http://www.richmond.com/news/output.aspx?Article_ID=3916348&Vertical_ID=2&tier=1&position=4

I giggled for a minute and tried to convince Barret to keep some Ivy so I could put it in a hanging pot. He tells me he does not like Ivy and convinces me it will take over the fence and we decide to pull it out of the garden. I begin raking again and Barret starts pulling the ivy, when I hear "uh oh". Never a good thing. (please remember that I am in bare feet) "Ummm, Mary you might want to come and see this." I walk over and look at what he is pointing at...nice a black widow spider with her eggs. Great. Barret goes and gets tire cleaner spray, because that is what we had I guess and I go and get shoes. I don't mind spiders, I mean I don't like them particularly, especially black widows, but the don't really bother me. Barret does not like them. He sprays the spider and squishes her with the shovel. Ok, where there is one there is probably more, but now I really want this Ivy gone. It is a mission. I make Barret give me the gloves and decide I will take the ivy down. Here I go pulling quick and watching everywhere my hand goes. Then it starts to happen. I pull all the ivy off the corner of the garage and get it all off, when this vine that seems to never end drops a snake skin. I let out a little scream and realize it is just the skin, but start to worry, because where there is a skin, there was a snake. Barret assures me I am okay and to just keep going. Ok, I have shoes on and now gloves, long pants and a sweatshirt. I assure you this is not what I envision wearing in the barefoot garden, but I am hellbent on getting this garden clean. I was pleased at how much ivy I had gotten out from the corner and decide to look up the side and make sure I got it all out, I don't want to have to do this again next year, and then it happens. Where I had just had my hands pops out a snake head. I start screaming, "Barret, Barret, SNAKE!!!!!" I HAAAAATE snakes. They just freak me out. I now standing on the side of the fence on any ledge I can get on almost is tears trying to show Barret the snake. Good old Barret pulls the snake out and just like the Queen of Hearts "off with its head". We examine it and of course anytime I see a brown snake I am convinced it is a copperhead. Although I think this was probably just a nice little brown snake who didn't know what was coming, either way I don't like them. So I think my season on barefoot in the garden is done for 2007. Things are starting to grow, but also things are starting to come out of hibernation and I realllly don't want to step on one. After all was done Barret and I got a chuckle out of our neighbor serving lettuce with a side of condom, black widow and snake.