Adventures In Southern Gardening.

Is it too soon to start making a list of things I'm not going to miss about living here? Probably, since we don't really have a move date yet. But, you know what they say: No better time than the present and all that.
So I was out in the garden this morning. I have been meaning to put up a trellis for the cukes and zukes to climb on, but since we don't own a ladder I wasn't sure how I was going to get those seven-foot stakes pounded into the ground. I have had a couple people offer to bring over ladders, etc., but have never managed to work it out. So today, I got all McGuyver. I backed my car through the yard and up against the side of the garden, then hopped onto the trunk and stood there and pounded in the stake. All I have is a rubber mallet, so there were flying chunks of it spewing out and I was using both hands, wobbling precariously all the while. I'm sure the people in the office complex behind me were highly entertained. The whole time I was standing up there I thought how lucky I was not to be trying to use a ladder, as I would surely have fallen off and broken something.
For the second stake, I had to recruit the b.h. I had already worn a blister into the crook of my left hand, and since the ground seemed a lot harder on that side it was near impossible for me to get the stake in. He did fine, though, and then went back in to resume backing up the shit on our desktop, which we think is virus-ey and dying.
So I unrolled the metal fence, and wound it around post A, folding the edge around the post as I went and using my other hand to fend off the other end of the fence, which wanted to roll itself back up again with me in the middle. I was doing this very slowly and methodically, even though it was hotter than hell and I was sweating like a whore in church, because I had a vivid picture in my head of trying to drive myself to the hospital with a section of fence stuck in my eye, and frankly I had no idea how we'd both fit in the car. What I didn't realize, however, was that while I was being so careful with my hands and my eyes, I was standing with my right foot planted firmly on a fire ant hill.
After I ripped my shoe off, I had to hop on one foot most of the way through the yard and all the way to the porch, where I began ripping off my clothes while running through the house to the shower.
No,I will not miss fire ants, but I suspect those people in the office complex are really going to miss me.