terminator

As the “weed terminator” sat in the shade of his very own fig tree, he rested and savored the aroma emanating from said tree that was uniquely fig. He also thought of his several adventures of the morning that had already taken place. In the first derring-do, he played the role of wasp terminator.

A friend had pointed out the wasp nest on the eave of the house and that became his first mission of the morning. Usually these things are not allowed to get large but this one was about 6 inches across and absolutely covered with the flying stingers. Fortunately it was a cool morning and wasps have trouble flying until it warms up and if they don’t fly, there is much less chance of getting stung.

The nest was pushed off its moorings with the business end of a garden hoe and though they made valiant efforts at flying, they could only crawl. The largest of the entities depicted in this scenario – the role playing weed terminator – went about carefully extinguishing the spark of life in the normally flighted insects – at least 30 assumed ambient temperature.

Next came the efforts of ridding the place of fire ants, or at least reducing their numbers. This was done with a pipe and a propane torch – stab the nest with the pipe and then burn their angry little bodies when they boil out of their lair. They raise my ire by making their mounds either in the garden or around one of the fruit trees. Most of the time all we puny humans can do is cause them to move to another site, hopefully off the property. There are now many less ants infesting blueberry hill.

These adventures being mostly successful, the “weed terminator” started his heavy job of the day, terminating grass, weeds, brambles and briars. The bed being cleaned up today is the last one in the garden that had almost totally gone back to wildness. This brings to the rest time mentioned earlier.

During a later rest period it occurred to me that there is a word for what was being done to the weeds in the garden. It was ‘deracination’ – or basically to pulling them up by the roots. Somehow the job took on a more important meaning and I would like to tell you that my steps grew lighter and the work was easier because of the word, but even with its new name, the sweat was all the same.

We can think up many words about church and say many words in church that sound really reverent but all those and anything else done in the service outside of true worship adds up to being useless and wasted efforts. ec