It's Raining in Baltimore

A lot, in fact.

I was rather excited when I saw all of the rain this morning. I had been planning on cutting the grass today, but when I saw the huge puddles already forming in our back yard, I knew the inaugural clip would have to be postponed. I really like cutting grass (minus the whole allergies part), so despite the letdown of having feet sans grass stains for the rest of the day, I couldn't help being giddy at the impeccable timing of the rain.

In the attempt to boost the grass composition in our lawn (if you can use the term so liberally for something that is 30% grass, 25% dandelions, 20% moss, 18% clover, and 7% wildflowers), I put fertilizer down earlier in the week as a precursor to grass seed. If it hadn't rained by today, I would have had to water our yard. By hand. Poke my eyes out.

So instead of cutting, I put down some more fertilizer (since I grossly underestimated the square footage of our yard before--does 3000 square feet seem abnormally large to anyone else?) and started pulling away on the 25 percent of our yard that is dandelions. I worked until my hands were numb and only made a small dent in the back yard. By the time I was done, I had a pile that was at least a couple cubic feet. Some of them even had roots large enough to be mistaken for carrots. Those punks!

I suddenly felt hungry, staring at this huge pile and thinking of a NYTimes soup recipe I saw a few weeks back that called for dandelions. I vacillated for a few minutes while scratching my arm, trying to decide if it was worth cleaning off all the mud. Would it be greener to eat them or to compost them? We do need more greens for the compost (since we already have plenty of browns), but do greens add carbon or nitrogen? I think we need more nitrogen. Are those in browns? Hmm. Then maybe we could eat the greens? Noticing that my arm was now hurting from scratching it so much, I started to look around for the usual culprit (juniper).

With no apparent cause, I started repeating a rhyme in my head:

Hairy vine, no friend of mine.
Hairy vine, no friend of mine.
Hairy...vine...?

Followed by a flashback to this moment:



Ahhh...yes. How could I have forgotten the 2% poison ivy? Not wanting Ben's leg to be the picture of our digestive tracks, I abandoned the dandelions in a sad heap and started washing everywhere with soap. Multiple times. My skin is chapped. But I think I'll pull through. Barely.

Lesson learned: Never be ambitious on a Saturday in the spring.