Don't Look Down

Bougainvillea

            

 Beautiful picture right? It grows as a vine or shrub, withstands dry conditions, and is deer resistant. What's not to love?! I'll show you.

 

Feel free to say "ouch" because those are my forearms after 4 hours of pruning the Bougainvillea in the rose house. When I got to work that morning, Tim said he had a special project for me. Score! Third day on the job, and they're already trusting me with special projects! We go get an extension ladder before heading into the rose house. Now, at this point, I have no idea what I'm getting myself into because no one has actually told me anything, which later I found out why. Tim pulls a hanging basket-type contraption along the cat-walk (25 feet in the air), and I think "Haha joke! Who's getting in that thing?" Yep, you guessed it...me. As I awkwardly scaled the ladder, Tim yelled up, "Be careful when you jump on. It swings. Oh and there's a bolt at the top so don't hit your head on it." Great. Don't fall, don't hit my head on the bolt, and don't say those potty words going through my head. What seemed like a lifetime later, I checked all 3 items off my list and began dragging myself down the cat-walk. 4 hours later, I'm still hanging in the basket pruning because I was afraid to get down. Jumping from the swinging basket to the top of a ladder wasn't the ideal situation I had visualized in my mind. In the end, I hit my head on the bolt every time I had to move the swinging basket, there was a cut up my nose from one of the thorns ricocheting off my pruners, and my arms resembled something from a horror movie. On a positive note, I lived to tell the tale (yes, I did have to jump from the swinging basket to the top of the ladder), and I even built character in the process. 

Beth: 1

Bougainvillea: 0