Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Gardening ADD

I received an email this morning that can be attributed to every thing I do; below is the text:

Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.

This is how it manifests:

I decide to water my garden.
As I turn on the hose in the driveway,

I look over at my car and decide it needs washing.

As I start toward the garage,

I notice mail on the porch table that

I brought up from the mail box earlier.

I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.

I lay my car keys on the table,

put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table,

and notice that the can is full.

So, I decide to put the bills back

on the table and take out the garbage first.

But then I think,

since I'm going to be near the mailbox

when I take out the garbage anyway,

I may as well pay the bills first.

I take my check book off the table,

and see that there is only one check left.

My extra checks are in my desk in the study,

so I go inside the house to my desk where

I find the can of Coke I'd been drinking.

I'm going to look for my checks,

but first I need to push the Coke aside

so that I don't accidentally knock it over

The Coke is getting warm,

and I decide to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold.

As I head toward the kitchen with the Coke,

a vase of flowers on the counter

catches my eye--they need water.

I put the Coke on the counter and

discover my reading glasses that

I've been searching for all morning.

I decide I better put them back on my desk,

but first I'm going to water the flowers.

I set the glasses back down on the counter,

fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote.

Someone left it on the kitchen table.

I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV,

I'll be looking for the remote,

but I won't remember that it's on the kitchen table,

so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs,

but first I'll water the flowers.

I pour some water in the flowers,

but quite a bit of it spills on the floor.

So, I set the remote back on the table,

get some towels and wipe up the spill.

Then, I head down the hall trying to

remember what I was planning to do.

At the end of the day:

the car isn't washed

the bills aren't paid

there is a warm can of Coke sitting on the counter

the flowers don't have enough water,

there is still only 1 check in my check book,

I can't find the remote,

I can't find my glasses,

and I don't remember what I did with the car keys.

Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today,

I'm really baffled because I know I was busy all damn day,

and I'm really tired.

I realize this is a serious problem,

and I'll try to get some help for it,

but first I'll check my e-mail....

This is how my day went yesterday:

I went into the garden to pull the weeds.
WHen I got all my tools gathered,
I realized that several cacti were dying and needed to be disposed of.

I got a box to put them in,
And then I decided that the flowers on the lanai could be planted in the garden.

I moved the large flower pots to the garden and
Saw that teh coneflowers were sprouting and needed to be planted.
As I started digging,
I noticed that there were 2 dead palm roots that needed to be removed.

I walked to the porch to get my water, and
I saw some new cow weed growing in the yard.
So, I stopped to pull it up,
I made it to the "weed box" with the weeds,
Then I spotted some rocks that needed to be moved.

I filled 2 pots with rocks,
And had no where to put them.
So I left them alone.
I went back to the garden

And pulled the weeds
Then I took all the cacti out of the garden,
condensed them into 2 pots,
throwing out the rest.

Chance knocked down several stands of mexican petunias,
So, I trimmed them back.
I pulled up all the dying cannas,
varigated ficus, and dead palm roots.

I planted the two large pots of flowers,
the coneflowers, and transplanted the lamb's ears.

Finally, I moved all the tools back to the garage, and then
washed out the pots...
Eventually they got put away.

Well, we went back into the yard in the evening
To removed the rest of the rocks from the corner of the yard...
Still had no place to put them,
So, I pulled all of the grass out of the area where the new fern bed will be next spring.
I pulled the weeds out of the other flower bed,
And never did sweep the back porch off.

I guess I do have ADD. My ADD is a little like OCD and ADD and meticulosity. I have to start 15 things at once, and then I finish them. However, I find (especially in the yard) that the little tasks--like removing rocks from an old small landscaped area--turn into the long ones. And the other part that's hard about gardening is that today I have a massive pain in my spine...ulnar nerve over worked yesterday from jerking on shrub roots that I shouldn't have. Well, I'll rest today, and go back to it tomorrow.



1 comment:

Kelly said...

a lanai huh? does that mean you're now an official member of aarp?

love that u have adhd; it's one of the many fine qualities u possess. i also love talking w/ u 'cause you're able to keep up and change topics on a whim all in the course of a 5 min. conversation.

signed,
an adhd talker