Sasee Magazine

I last left my house on Friday, March 13, and truly, I’ve been fine, pulling all those weeds, repotting plants, planting seeds and itsy-bitsy slips of things that have been rooting for awhile. And reading, and cleaning – and cleaning, and cleaning, and washing my hands, and washing my hands again, and again – well, you get the picture.

So, back to the weeding.

When I get an area cleared, I like to put down layers of newspaper, topped with pine straw, in the ever-delusional hope that the weeds will give up from lack of sunlight and die forever and ever, amen.

I had a problem: No pine straw.

Yes, I know, given the state of the world right now, lacking pine straw does not EVEN make the top 1000 concerns. I hesitated a bit making this post, for fear someone might take me to task for frivolity.

Still. I DID do all that weeding. I DO want my desired plants to flourish. And gardening soothes my soul, grounds me, reminds me of real and solid and true things, and may very well keep me from baying at the moon.

Naked, even.

So. Pine straw I need.

And I know, I know, I know: I am not ABOUT to go out and buy some pine straw – pine straw! When people are needing toilet paper and Lysol and wine – oh, yes, more wine, because we did not KNOW this was going to require several bottles a day, and we are SERIOUSLY under stocked – so yes, I am not ABOUT to go buy pine straw somewhere and catch coronavirus and then die because I had to have some pine straw.

I have SOME dignity.

I pondered a little, and I came up with a plan.

I drove to Stevens Hardware on Dawson – big ol’ shout out here to locally-owned businesses – parked by the fenced and locked enclosure that holds the pine straw, popped my trunk, and called the hardware, explained my idea.

I wanted that pine straw, I said to the young lady who answered, yet not bad enough to risk exposing either of us to something we might not know we had, so could I maybe read her my credit card number, sitting in the parking lot as I was, and could maybe someone come out and unlock the pine straw pen, and I could load up my three bales?

Yep, sure could.

And it turned out even better: The guy who came out to unlock the pen loaded my bales for me.

Nobody, nowhere, no how got within six feet of anyone else.

Heck, I didn’t even get within six feet of my own pine straw – until I got it home. Moral of the story: A little out-of-the-box thinking is gonna help us through the next while.

Whoever heard of curb service for pine straw before today?