A Negative Gardener

Now it is cool, Pliny is catching up on some gardening. She is in the front garden, gardening the only way she knows how.

Pliny gardens with a dinner knife. It is a very short dinner knife, now. She uses it to gouge out the grass that grows vigorously between the pavers at the edge of the almost dead lawn. She has long since stopped thinking that this is a paradox. She just gets down to it, and pulls out grass with the dinner knife, which is short due to the ravages of friction.

There is an art to ripping out grass from between pavers. Pliny has not mastered it yet. She uses her thumb delicately enough, and knows how to grasp just the right amount of grass between it and the flat blade of the knife so that when she yanks it she won't fall over backwards. But she doesn't know how to deal with the flat cushion of tiny grass roots that remain to sprout another day. Nor can she protect her knuckles from the fate that has befallen the knife.

Her back hurts. I'm a negative gardener, thinks Pliny.