When Gardening Becomes Dangerous

During my lifetime, I have had so many interests, activities, and hobbies that there is rarely a dull or empty moment. I drift from one to another as time, circumstance, inspiration, or happenstance gives me motivation in one direction or another.

You become the “victim” when I get the urge to write or someone gives me that nudge to get off my keister and sit at my computer.

It began with crabgrass growing in some of my flower beds, and daffodil bulbs that needed harvesting, thinning, and sorting so I could give them to friends, neighbors, and family.

Working the soil can be dangerous, of course, if you are using power tools and get careless—but what about using just hand tools? To remove the incline in my front yard, I built a retaining wall. That raised the lawn almost four feet to horizontal. I put two tons of crushed rock behind the wall to keep it vertical.

Between the wall and the lawn, I created a flower bed about 18 inches wide, separated from the grass by a six-inch-wide, four-inch-deep concrete mowing strip to keep lawn weeds out of the flowers. That was the plan.

I planted yellow, early-blooming short jonquils and later-blooming white daffodils with yellow cups in fortified garden soil. The effect each spring is beautiful—a foot-wide bed of cheerful yellow gradually replaced by taller white flowers with yellow cups. People occasionally stop to take photos when the flowers are at their peak.

With summer heat, the daffodils go dormant, so I added three colors of dahlias and daylilies near the driveway to provide summer flowers. Nature is clever, however, and over the last ten years, cracks have developed in the mowing strip, allowing crabgrass to creep through and under the concrete.

I finally bit the bullet and began digging up the flower bed two weeks ago—putting the dahlia sprouts in small containers and the daylilies in larger ones—while I sifted the soil to remove bulbs, rocks, and weeds.

The area had been lined with black weed guard cloth, but the crabgrass had sprouted and penetrated even that. Before returning the soil and dahlias, I added a new layer of tougher gray weed guard. Sometimes, I would find a pink worm in the soil and gently return it, since they help aerate the soil for plant roots.

Then I came upon a worm-like creature—about the same size but not pink—that moved very fast, more side-to-side than forward like a typical worm. Its top side was a dark purple-black, and only one end was tapered like a worm. The other end was slightly wider and blunted.

I carefully picked it up with two fingers, just behind what I assumed was the head, preventing it from turning. I brought it closer to examine the details—but not too close. It began to wiggle like a banshee on steroids. Then it opened its eyes and stuck out a forked tongue.

I again checked the rear end, but there was no rattle. I did not look close enough to check for fangs—I’m not totally stupid. I did dispatch the creature, since there are small children in our neighborhood.

We live in rattlesnake country, and newborn rattlesnakes don’t always have rattles—but they are just as venomous as the adults.

I recall that when I arrived at Mather Air Force Base as Chief of Pediatrics in 1970, one of my first ER patients was a teenager who had found some small eggs among the rocks along the American River, between the dam and Lake Natoma. He put them in a jar until they hatched.

Eager to impress a female friend, he reached into the jar to take one out. He discovered the hard way that they had fangs—and plenty of venom.

By the time he got to the ER, his index finger looked like a Polish sausage. He survived, thanks to antivenin shots, which were always stocked in the ER—because this is rattlesnake country.

Years later, my mother came to visit. Behind our first house, I had a half-acre garden so my kids could see where food came from—and learn that people must work hard to produce it.

This included peanuts and potatoes. My mother insisted on hoeing the potatoes.

Moments later, she came running out, screaming that there was a snake in the garden—and she wouldn’t go back in until I killed it. She handed me her hoe.

I had seen harmless snakes there before, and I went in to prove to her that snakes could be useful for keeping rodents away.

I came out after killing a good-sized rattler.

Mothers are usually smarter than their sons. She had proven that once again.

~ Ray Blain