Not Again!

After this summer's earlier garden vs. chemicals disaster, I had done what the extension office recommended and soaked down the beds to leach any chemical residue out of the soil. Then after it had had time to dry out again, I'd finally found time to transplant my Carantan leeks into the empty bed. They were looking really good. My spinach plants had bolted and re-seeded themselves, and I had a nice crop of baby spinach coming up. I also had a square of green onions that were getting to be a nice, usable size, and just as soon as I ran out of the ones in my fridge, I was going to pull some up. Then this last Saturday, the second disaster of the year hit. The name of this disaster? Boy Scouts of America. Eagle Scouts, to be exact.

They'd left a cryptic little note on our front door saying that they were going to be painting the fence along the main road in our subdivision--the one that is on the north side of my house. I didn't worry too much because I'd already harvested all the veggies I was going to be able to from the garden boxes on my side of that fence. I didn't worry about the east side fence because they didn't say they were going to be staining that. In any case, the Scout involved didn't even leave me a phone number to contact him if I had any concerns about his project. They did, however, warn us in that note to move anything that was close to the fence so it wouldn't be sprayed. So on Saturday when I was busy and there was no one at home to stop them, he and his group sprayed their stain on my north fence.

And all over the side of my house. And my east fence, which they hadn't said they'd be staining. And next to that east fence, all of my leeks, green onions, and spinach, not to mention the one chard plant that had come up following the earlier fence-cleaning disaster. The last of the food I was going to get out of my garden, toxic, poisoned, and wasted. Again! I'm even more angry about that than I am about the stain that can't be washed off the side of my house.

We can't just re-paint the area of the house that got splattered, either. We'll have to re-paint the whole side! I can't fathom how human beings can be so completely clueless and so destructive. That stain on the house alone represents more than a thousand dollars of damage, since we'll have to hire a painter to come and re-paint it. We don't have time to paint it ourselves, for heaven's sake, and the house is only, what...four years old? Did the Eagle Scout think that I could manage to move my house so it didn't get splattered by his stupid sprayer?

Who stains subdivision fences as an Eagle Scout project, anyway? That makes no sense. We don't even have a high percentage of elderly in our community who might be helped by such a gesture, and it's the homeowners association's job to maintain the community area fences, etc. Now they're going to get a big bill for the damage. I'm done playing Ms. Nice Girl.

Stupid homo sapiens and their chemicals.