Humor: Yard trouble now blooms on me

By SCOTT HOLLIFIELD
Media General News Service
Published: July 24, 2008

I itch.

As I write this, I am trying mightily to keep from removing my fingers from the keyboard and raking them across the ugly, raised red patch on my shin. Or the one ringing my wrist. Or the one spread across my forearm. Or the one slightly north of my pinkie toe. Or the one shaped like a chain of Caribbean islands two inches from my belly button.

When I moved from the country to the city, I thought the poison ivy threat level had dropped from red to yellow on the Department of Homeland Security’s Evil Plant Advisory System and my horrible experiences were all behind me. I was wrong, and I’ve got the blistered skin to prove it.

Stupid yard work.

I had been putting it off for a while.

“This weekend, I’m going to get out there and take care of that mess by the front door,” I told my wife.

That was sometime around May. Of last year.

Frankly, I was just tired. I spent 14 springs and summers unsuccessfully beating back the briars and weeds from the sagging front porch of our “charming fixer-upper with breath-taking views and recently installed indoor plumbing.”

At the new old house, I didn’t particularly want to mow, trim or mulch with any regularity and would gladly accept the Crappiest Yard of The Year Award at the annual neighborhood block party.

Eventually though, the mess by the front door began to overwhelm the house. Vines snaked up the chimney and I dreamed one night they went over the top, slithered out the fireplace and choked me to death while I danced with a polar bear wearing Abe Lincoln’s hat. It was a pretty disturbing dream.

“This weekend, I’m going to get out there and take care of that mess by the front door,” I told my wife for roughly the 73rd time. To her shock, I did just that. She dived right in there with me, cutting and pulling. We discovered a lost Boy Scout troop, the set of a new Tarzan movie and that front window we’d forgotten about. Actually, just the window.

“It’s a good start,” I said after we’d piled the trimmings by the curb. “In a couple of years, I’ll hit all those other trouble spots.”

At that point, I was unaware of the trouble spots festering on me.

I awoke the next day to minor itching.

“Was there any poison ivy in that mess?” I asked my wife.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you do the rhyme warnings before we started?”

“What are the rhyme warnings?”

“You know, leaves of three, let it be?”

“No.”

“Berries white, run with fright?”

“I didn’t do any rhyme warnings.”

“Hairy vine, no friend of mine?”

“Nope. Didn’t do it.”

“So, I spend an entire 20 minutes of my Saturday afternoon doing back-breaking labor and you, painfully aware of how unobservant I am in most circumstances, fail to do even the most rudimentary of rhyme warnings. Well, I’ve got some new ones for you. I’m starting to itch, and it’s a son of a *%$! I’m turning all red, just shoot me in the head.”

I woke up the next morning - on the couch, after my unfortunate outburst, which I apologetically blamed on urushiol intoxication - to a full-blown outbreak.

Co-workers and family members alternately recoiled in horror at my oozing sores, offered personal horror stories ("My aunt breathed it in while they were burning it and then she swelled up like frog and burst into flames.") and offered a variety of folk remedies:

Alcohol (the rubbing, not the drinking, kind).

Baking soda.

Bleach.

Buttermilk.

Oatmeal.

Saltwater.

Urine.

Some I tried and some I didn’t.

Know what worked? Nothing. I am now removing my fingers from the keyboard.

I itch.

Scott Hollifield is editor/general manager of The McDowell News in Marion, N.C. Contact him at P.O. Box 610, Marion, N.C. 28752 or e-mail .