Texas Hates Me

No, it's true.  Texas may be an inanimate object/concept, but it really does hate me.  Even the plants here are out to get me.

Thursday this week marked the first time in quite a while that I have been attacked by a plant.  The last time it happened, I was very young and it was seaweed and I've been afraid of the stuff ever since.  But yesterday, I discovered that there is a plant in Texas that makes caltrops.  I am not joking.  Texas makes natural caltrops, and they are in my backyard.

See, all I wanted to do was take some bits of asparagus out to our compost pile without putting on my shoes.  Having been raised in the Midwest, I knew to be on the lookout for nettles and sticks and maybe even very dry clumps of grass, which can get a bit prickly.  But this was a whole different level.  This was not a minor annoyance, or some patch of ground that was slightly uncomfortable to walk over.  I didn't really get stuck until I was headed back into the house, at which point I had almost Bruce Willis in Die Hard levels of ouch.

I was pretty sure I had stepped on a series of small nails somehow embedded pointy part up in the ground, or had actually wandered into a Bruce Willis movie and was walking on broken glass.  But no.  This was no man-made item, no accident of rental house repair, that had caused me such pain.  This was pure hatred, growing from the dusty red dirt of Texas to stab me in the foot.  This was nature at its most sweetly twisted, drawing my blood even as I tried to do the right thing and compost!  This, my friends, was the evil heart of Texas, stabbing at me.

I don't know exactly what plant these things come from, but when I find them, I'm going to dig them out of the ground and then salt the earth where they grew.  Because when I say it drew blood, I'm not kidding.  I got stuck in the foot with these things on Thursday, and I was still picking bits of plant caltrop out of my foot just this morning.  They stabbed deep enough that they made my feet not only bloody, but sore at each of the tiny wound sites.  I love the planet and all, but I'll be darned if I wouldn't pour industrial strength weed killer over the entirety of my backyard just to be sure I destroy whatever is producing these things.

What's really awful is that, beyond killing my ability to walk outside barefoot, which is something I enjoy doing, these stupid things are also going to keep me from letting Theo play out in the yard.  Sure, I can put shoes on his feet and make him wear long pants and long sleeves, but what happens when he trips?  He's going to trip.  And when he falls, he should hit grass.  Maybe he'd get a bit grumpy at having not kept his feet, but I sure as heck don't want him impaled with tiny little plant knives every time he falls.  Plus, they'd probably stab him through his pants and sleeves anyway.  These things are frickin' serious.

So thanks, Texas, for producing these awful things.  Whatever they are, my feet still hurt where they stabbed me and they have made a mockery of the already lame set of weeds that passes for a lawn out here.  If tomorrow weren't Easter and everything in this god forsaken state weren't closed (including the grocery store for half the day!), I would be out planning my gardening revenge.

I guess my anti-plant rampage will have to wait.  Until then, take care and I'll write again soon!