Monday, May 19, 2008

Evidence I Need to Grow Up

I really ought to have grown out of this but I couldn't resist. I'm weeding a book called The Church Ministering to Rural Life. It was published in the 40's by The Home Mission and Church Erection Society of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. Perhaps they were too united? It also reminded me of an art history lecture from my freshman year of college where the professor, a Norwegian old enough to have been in a Nazi concentration camp referred to the feat of constructing a gothic cathedral in a relatively short time (less than fifty years?) as "a very speedy erection." I shouldn't, but I still get a chuckle from that sort of thing.

4 comments:

Jenn-Jenn, the Mother Hen said...

Then I, too, need to grow up as I guffawed when I read this post. Too bad I was at work; now my boss thinks I have mental problems (well, more so than he already did. LOL)

Lydia said...

I get a chuckle from you 'weeding'.

Everett said...

I've even done real actual weeding in a flower bed. Most of the plant weeding I've done was pulling up weeds coming through sidewalk and blacktop cracks at Northfield Mobil and the synagogue but I also pulled some weeds in the flower bed at the Mobil station. The boss's wife was particular about the flowers.

Becca said...

Out here, we get these spiny thistles that resemble demon dandelions. They can grow to four feet tall, have huge pricks, and develop giant balls of seeds that can cover an entire yard.

You can't grab them and pull them out. One, your hand would bleed. Two, the stalks can easily grow to an inch in diameter. Instead, you have to go to Home Depot and get this stick with an iron bit at the end, shaped like the tip of snake's tongue. Jab the bit into the ground at the base of the thistle, twist to uproot it, then lever up to pull it out of the ground.

It's best to get them right after they sprout, when they're only a foot tall. They grow ridiculously fast after monsoons. I noticed one in the yard one morning, came home from work that afternoon after a monsoon, and the thistle had doubled in height. The reason I know that they can reach four feet is I had one in a hidden area of the yard that I didn't catch until about a week after the storm--and I know it wasn't there before the storm came.