Loose Ends
Don't pull the wrong trigger
Susan Nienow

Never doesn't mean probably shouldn't. For the second year in a row, I went around the yard with an insect sprayer in one hand and an herbicide in another. They aren't interchangeable.

My other half quite diplomatically said, "I'd be taking a chance if I tried to do that. I'd get them mixed up."

Naturally, I took that as a challenge. "I learned that lesson last year. I'll never make that mistake again," I said adamantly.

Last summer I sprayed one of the laurels with weed killer, only noticing the fatal mistake with the last spritz. So I grabbed the hose, sprayed the entire shrub with water and then ran (the label said 'works in ten minutes') for the bucket, sponge and soapy water. I washed and rinsed every single leaf on the shrub, apologized to it and slunk back into the house.

This summer, older and wiser, I started around the yard first spritzing the weeds I couldn't pull and spraying the insects that wouldn't respond to hosing, drowning or squishing. I had the weed killer-white sprayer- in my left hand since I am right handed and the insecticide-green sprayer-in my right hand hoping that I would spray more with my right than my left. I finished my perennial bed with no catastrophes and was feeling power course through my veins.

Moving to the shrubs along the back of the house, I spotted webs on the hibiscus again and sprayed away. Never spray a hibiscus unless you check the sprayer label or, in my case, the color of the spray bottle, because hosing it and then washing the leaves with sudsy water doesn't cancel out having sprayed it with weed killer.

Cleaning products aren't interchangeable either. A good blast of furniture polish takes about 20 minutes to completely clean off a window. And the slippery factor makes polish a very bad idea for steps. No one here is admitting to having needing to learn that lesson, but I still have a scar on my knee.

Inside the house there are many lessons to be learned.

Never get a new cat and a new bedspread at the same time. That lesson could be expanded to never buying new carpeting and a puppy at the same time. We bought our cat an Eiffel Tower sized scratching post to entice him away from the sofa. We were somewhat successful. Now he uses the scratching post half the time.

You should see my wildflower garden, but you'll have to work at it. The stores had unlimited choices-shade, sun, blue and pink, hot and dry-you get the drift. I bought two varieties. Nowhere on the cans did it say the garden had to be viewed from a distance of no farther than two feet. The few flowers that have come up are 1/2 inch in diameter and visible with binoculars from the driveway.

Finally, don't forget to cross items off any shopping list that you share. Do you know how many rolls of toilet paper are in two of those huge cubes that come from the warehouse stores?