A Call to Action

Weeds popping up through the bricks

You may look at some of these pics and figure I haven't weeded in years, but actually it's only been a month since I tackled the job.

The weather was being uncooperative, a steady sunny 96 degrees the past few weeks, my usual course of action of pulling them out of the ground one by one, crippling my back for weeks, did not seem to be the smart move. As a 52 year old overweight smoker, I didn't want to have a coronary and fall dead in the middle of an evil green weed grave. So I went to the big orange store and spent more money on this project than I wanted to, and bought a metal contraption that I hoped would have the weeds shaking in their roots.

Meet my brand new Black & Decker Trimmer and Edger or Weapon of Weed Destruction.

Watch out weeds, we're coming to get you!

I stood in the orange store for about an hour checking out about 40 of these devices until settling on this piece of machinery. The very nice man who was having the same problem as me, chose a gas model. But I know better than to keep gasoline engines in my sweltering garage, so I chose the one with 2 chargers, each carrying about a 40 minute charge.

After charging them both for 8 hours apiece, I was ready to go...As soon as I put this machine together that is. It didn't look all that complicated when I first looked at it, 4 screws is not something I would normally need to call a support group for, but that one damn screw wouldn't go into that one damn hole. (Sounds like a very bad porn movie). I know there are sadistic people in the home improvement industry that design these easy to put together tools to make the average person feel like idiots, but I was determined. One hour and thirteen minutes later, sweat pouring off of me (hard work or hot flash?), me and my metal sidekick were ready to take on the world!