No. 101 June 2009
Just a Country Girl
by Bo Drury
I always think of myself as a country girl but we moved from the country when I was fifteen. Twenty eight years later I moved back. My dream had been to have a big two story house with land and I finally got one. With it I got rattlesnakes, ticks, scorpions, and various other unwelcome country neighbors.
There was no fence, no grass, and no trees other than a couple of scraggly mesquites, and a lot of grass-burrs, goat-heads or devils horns which ever you want to call them. We were growing a lot of those and nothing else, but I wasn’t discouraged for I had a vision for my little two acre plot.
My Dad laughed and said I was now a city gal and not meant for the country. I had to prove to him I could handle it so I bought a book. I am a great believer in books, anything you want to know, someone has written a book on it. This one was called “Five Acres and Independence” it had everything I needed in there. I was set and I set out to prove that this city-fid country gal could make a beautiful place out of this baron wasteland called Arrowhead Estates.
First I had to get rid of the sticker-weeds and plant something green around my house. I chopped and hoed til my fingers were blood raw, then on the advice of my husbands cousin I tied a gunny-sack around my rake and wa-la it picked up the stickers just like he said it would. That's a plus, having a country cousin. As I sat down to rest and have a tall glass of ice cold tea I noticed a black stain crawling up my dining room wall..ticks..I had been invaded..I had already turned up the meanest looking scorpions I had ever seen while hoeing in the yard. I later found out they love empty houses and my house had been empty for a while.
With the help of my husband and youngest son I got my hedge and flowers planted. It was a lot of work but well worth it, the house looked great with the green around the foundation.
I opened my windows wide that night to let in the fresh air and slept like a baby but when I opened my eyes the next morning, it wasn’t just the sunshine that welcomed me through my bedroom window but a cow happily eating my bushes! I grabbed my robe and screaming for my son charged through the house, broom in hand, and out the back door yelling at the giant cow to go away from my bushes. The dog came out barking and Danny-boy ran out in his pjs and the race was on, around and around the house. The cow wouldn’t quit running in my flower bed and the dog was on her heels snapping and barking, it was a circus with Danny bringing up the rear and me screaming for them to stop. I couldn't tell who was chasing who.
About that time a sympathetic cowboy drove down the road and saw our dilemma and stopped to offer a hand, he pulled out the old lasso and roped the old heifer and tied her to the mesquite tree til her owner came to claim her and I looked around at the devastation of my flowers and what used to be bushes and sat down and laughed hysterically. What a start for a wanna-be country gal.
copyright 2009, Bo Drury