So work has been intruding into my life, and many of my projects and pastimes have had to sit on the shelf.\u00a0 The Nation’s chores, however, will not be put off.\u00a0 In particular, there is a vast area of fertile garden (cleared in October, blogged about in this post<\/a>, another entry that begins with an excuse about why I have not been blogging – sigh) around the grounds that requires tending.\u00a0 We know the garden is fertile because there is an ample amount – I believe the metric system term is “a shitload” – of this stuff growing in it:<\/p>\n Garlic mustard, before the slaughter of April 2009<\/p><\/div>\n It’s garlic mustard<\/a> or Alliaria petiolata<\/em>, and our garden is currently populated about 80% by volume with the stuff. \u00a0 From the linked article, I learned that it’s not native to our part of the world, having been brought to North America by European settlers.\u00a0 The same informative article also tells me that each little plant will produce between 150 and 850 seeds, and that each of these seeds can remain “viable” (which is geek-speak for “growing like a motherfucker in your garden”) for FIVE YEARS.\u00a0 Thanks a lot for this little gift, pioneers!\u00a0 I guess you just forgot to bring along giant bowls of ebola virus and some barrels full of testicle-attacking poisonous reptiles too.<\/p>\n Anyway, as I stood in the middle of what is supposed to be a flower bed looking around at our bumper crop of this invasive little species, it occurred to me that – had I closed my eyes for a moment and just inhaled the pungent aroma –\u00a0 I might have mistakenly believed myself to be standing knee deep in a bowl of that butter they give you with escargot.\u00a0 Um, I think it’s called “garlic butter.”<\/p>\n Okay, so my writing chops are a little rusty.<\/p>\n My mission, assigned to me by the Juniorvanian Minister of Natural Resources (Spouse), was a delicate, highly technical and intricate operation;\u00a0 it was a job tailor-made for me, as it demanded inexhaustible stores of careful patience, an attribute for which I am reknowned across the very width and breadth of the world.\u00a0 Ahem<\/em>.\u00a0 My job was this:\u00a0 take a whippersnapper to all that shit, and cut the little fuckers back to the stone age.\u00a0\u00a0 In about the amount of time it takes to clip a rechargeable battery to a battery operated weed-whacker,\u00a0 I became the Genghis Khan of the garlic mustard civilization.\u00a0\u00a0 In this way, I gardened in a genocidal rage for perhaps an hour, at which time the indiscriminate slaughter was halted a battery recharge (the weed-whacker’s, not mine).\u00a0\u00a0 I resumed the butchery after tea.<\/p>\n By day’s end, I had laid waste to a significant number of the blighters, at the expense of only one minor casualty for our side:\u00a0 a stiff and crampy trigger finger.\u00a0 War is hell.\u00a0 For the garlic mustard – for now, anyway – Black & Decker was their Waterloo;\u00a0 but tomorrow is another day, and as an afternoon rain approached and I retreated to the relative safety of the living room to care for the wounded (with an ice-cold root beer and Game 6 of the Flyers-Penguins series), I cast a nervous glance out the window to the Eastern Front.\u00a0 Reinforcements are massing under the spruce trees out there in an apparent flanking maneuver.<\/p>\n You will see no “Mission Accomplished” banner draped across the Juniorvanian Capitol tonight;\u00a0 this could get ugly.<\/p>\n p.s.\u00a0 I hesitate to mention it, on account of I don’t want to jinx anything<\/a>, but – since you promised not to tell anyone – the Spits beat their arch-rivals the London Knights (and soon-to-be New York Islanders’ number one draft pick John Tavares) to advance to the OHL Final<\/a>.\u00a0 Go Spits Go!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To quote a certain incompletely deceased peasant from a classic Python film, “I’m not dead yet.”<\/p>\n It’s been an absolutely harrowing month for Spouse and I, work wise. Ten or eleven hour days are the norm, work is still being brought home nonetheless, and neither of us feels as though we are keeping up with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":635,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions\/635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"IMG_7610\"](\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3627\/3474041897_25240457f6.jpg\" "\\"Garlic")
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