The Secret of the Ooze…

I finally got to sleep in today, and as a result Tasha and I ate a late lunch at Denny’s.  Afterward, I headed over to Black & Read to show Derek his new website design which I had done for them as freelance work.  It was mid-afternoon, and I was lamenting how bad our yard has gotten bemoaning the recent letter from my HOA.  Tasha pointed out that there was a Lowe’s right around the corner and that we should pick up some yard care stuff and I could do that while she worked on her costume.

That was fine with me, I remembered something that my Dad told me about yardwork being good stress relief so I was looking forward to it.  I bought these giant loppers, some organic fertilizer for the yard that some guy recommended that was also shopping there, a weeding tool, and some lawn bags and made my merry way back home.

I started out by weeding all of the obvious weeds from the yard and cleaning out the planter underneath our pine tree.  We had some small to mid-sized trees that were growing in our rocks around the house, so shortly I had a driveway full of felled pseudo-trees.  I chopped them up with the lopper and bagged them.  Feeling pretty good so far!  After a short break, I watered the front yard with the fertilizer and then I ventured into the back yard with my weed eater and cleaned up our patio.  It sorely needed weed-eating, so I swept up and bagged the remains.  I took the lopper to a few more small trees, adding to a pile of detritus that had been accumulating in the corner of my back yard waiting for yard bags.

I was getting pretty tired now, but I vowed to get that pile of debris cleaned up.  An hour and a half later and three full lawn bags, I was down to just the recycling bin and a black tub filled with lawn waste that the previous homeowners had accumulated prior to our moving in.  I got the recycling bin cleared and moved on to the black tub.  I grabbed a few things out of the top of the tub, and I noticed that my glove was wet.  “Oh,” I thought, “some pine needles have just plugged up the bottom of the tub a little and I got some rainwater in here.”

Not a big deal, right?  I tipped the tub and was nearly overcome by the smell of sewage.  It seemed that rainwater HAD gotten into the tub, but there were no drainage holes in the bottom.  The water had liquefied everything in the tub, save for a very deceptive plug of sticks, twigs, pine needles, and pitch black sludge.  When I tipped the tub back upright, some gas or steam of some kind was wafting out of there.  The sludge smelled like a zoo, or something that had been dead for a long time.  I had to go get the snow shovel to pick up the pile of sludgy remains that had so convincingly fooled me into dumping out the bucket.

I ended up having to get my hose and spray out the bucket and the affected area of my yard, since the smell was now permeating the neighborhood.  My adventures in yard work ended shortly thereafter.  At least I didn’t have to chop up the debris in the final bucket, right?

I’m somewhat of a good neighbor now… my yard is much more well-kept.  I also know that I have a pretty strong stomach too.  If anyone in my family gets Teenage or Mutant in the next few days, I give you all the permission to create comic books about us.