Earth, Salted

Being human, as I am, I am diligent about some things, lazy about others.

My mother and I will sometimes chat after 9:30pm and, in the wintertime, she invariably asks me if Finley and Molly have been out for "their last walk."

I put this phrase in quotes, because it is, essentially, a joke. "Their last walk" is anything but, especially when it's as cold as Witchtit, Kansas. "Their last walk" usually consists of me or Mrs. Apron opening the front door and shoving the old dog outside to urinate on the pachysandra that constitutes our front yard, and leashing up the young dog to do exactly the same. Maybe some day she will be able to go out there without a leash on, but I expect we're at least 4.5 years away.

Anyway, after nearly two years of dog pee, the pachysandra has, um, suffered. Last night, as I stood in the doorway watching Finley eliminate urine all over one section of brown schmenk that was, two years prior, vibrant and lush green pachysandra, I thought to myself, "Here I am, at 30 years old, feeling guilt over the wanton destruction of my own property." I've made it, kids. Middle age is here. Pardon me while I go trim my ear hair.

Really, though, there is a circular swath of land on the right side of our pachysandra that is wilted, brown, awful, disgusting, and it's, um, large. It calls out, "Here live two lazy shitbirds who cannot be bothered to take their dogs on a proper walk down the block because it's dark and it's cold and they really shouldn't even be allowed to have dogs anyway if this is the way they treat them and, while we're at it, they really shouldn't be able to own a house with a pachysandra lawn if this is how they treat it. Let's hang them."

We're pathetic. I mean, Jesus Christ-- it's pachysandra. One of the heartiest, most durable, most brainless-to-care-for subshrubs out there. Pachysandra's Wiki-entry refers to it as "leathery" with "coarsely-toothed" leaf margins. And yet, we've managed to assassinate it. Drenched under a relentless stream of steaming hot dog piss, the pachysandra that graces our front lawn was doomed from the moment we closed on this house. Sure, we've made improvements inside. We've stripped tons and tons of old lady wall-paper, we've put in a serious closet in the master bedroom, we've even de-Jesuified the house and put our Jew stank everywhere, but we just couldn't manage to keep that pachysandra alive. And, for the first time in my life, I am suffering from an acute case of horticultiguilt.

Seriously. We suck.