Get to the Point

Wear shoes when watering the late summer vegetable garden. Soothing though it is to stroll serenely through the cool damp grass, hauling a drippy hose, danger lurks when you least expect it.

Just as much as I love the flowers, grass, flavors, smells, and sights of my back yard, so does a myriad of insects and birds (evidence of the birds is dropped all over the zucchini leaves and half of the missing sunflower seeds). The yellow praying mantis was lurking on the dead parts of the potted johnny-jump-ups. Daddy long legs raced away from my feet and the water deluge. The bees and flies were zooming around the towering sunflowers.

The bees also crept and buzzed un-noticed in the clover behind the garden shed. I found one. With my baby toe.

He used his point to get my attention. That's the fastest I've moved in a long time! Scraped out the stinger, and there lay the poor little guy (although at the time I did not think that, since pain was zinging up my foot), gray and black striped, butt-less and dying. Just doing his job and minding his own business. And then I had to step on him.

The point: wear shoes when tip-toeing in the clover (or any other flowering ground cover).

Standing in a pan of baking soda paste...