English Ivy is Good for Writers

Being a typical Gemini, my mind skips from subject to subject at the speed of light. A lot of the time, this makes it hard to get all of my thoughts down on paper when I'm in writing mode. Typically, I become excited about a subject and jump right into researching it. Then, just as suddenly, I lose interest in that topic as the next carrot dangles itself in my mind. So it isn't uncommon for me to have three or four articles brewing at once!

All morning I've been trying to put the finishing touches on an article I've been working on here and there for at least two months. It's about a very interesting subject, but I have about five source documents that need footnotes throughout the article. Well, do you think any of the documents I have bookmarked contain the elusive fact that I put in the article? I searched for over an hour, going back and reading every word of all five documents-nothing! I even reentered my initial search criteria to try to pinpoint the source I had forgotten to bookmark. Nothing!

Finally, out of sheer frustration, I pushed myself away from the computer and decided to walk out into my back garden. I spied it almost immediately. There had been a subtle English Ivy invasion of my prize red daylily bed. In fact, if I didn't love those daylilies so, I might have forgotten that a bed existed there in that spot between the evergreen trees along the fence line. The English Ivy had neatly cloaked the bluestone border around the bed, wrapping the entire bed, border, and tree line with a lush, green skirt.

Before I was really aware of what I was doing, I was ripping long English Ivy tendrils off of my daylilies, which are just little bright green shoots right now. They are clustered together like a wagon train being circled by vicious predatory wild animals. I had no garden gloves; no garden clippers. It was just me, my bare hands, and my frustration, working to give those daylily babies a breath of fresh air and a glimpse of sunshine.

It took about fifteen minutes to free them. My hands were red and sore, my nails dirty and chipped, but all my frustration was gone!

It doesn't cost much at all to wash my hands and trim my chipped nails. The therapy I receive from that English Ivy and other plants in my garden is priceless to me! Oh, and that article with the fact I can't validate yet is still percolating. I just thought of something else I need to research!