Sneaky Spearmint
A few years ago, in a life more ordinary, I spent the summer of 2001 working in the garden center at the local Wal-Mart. Working for this company was one of my least favorite jobs to be sure (partially because I got stuck in the toy department at Christmas time) but there were times I did like working in the garden center. These times were those when I got to be outside watering the plants, or restocking them. I was the only girl working in the garden center (other than the manager) and when the summer business picked up, guess who got stuck inside working the register? They didn’t even try to hide their horribly sexist motives. I wasn’t strong enough to assemble the outdoor equipment (anything from grills to swing sets) and they found someone else to water the plants. His name was Rudy (I think, and for all intents and purposes, that is what I’m going to call him). He was Hispanic and his English was not bad. He had a strong accent and I liked being on break with him and Shaw because he would talk about Mexico (Shaw also worked at Wal-Mart, although his years of servitude extended way beyond my own. Peter also worked there for a while—they both pushed carts—we all got jobs in a big hiring spree). At any rate, it seemed Rudy was exempt from register duty and it fell to me.
There were other interesting things about the job, though. I hated working the register. If it was dead, I was bored. If it was busy, I was depressed. I can’t explain this; it is just being constantly reminded how small-town my home town is. However, occasionally I got to help unload plants off of special-delivery trucks. I was not especially fond of the cactus. These were large plants, for the most part. Three feet tall on average. They were wrapped with thin brown paper and although that helped, one wrong move and you had a hand fully of needles. I of course dropped one on my leg. I could write many blog posts on my clumsiness. But that’s not what this one is about. This post (although you may not see how, yet) is about spearmint.
About halfway through the summer we got in a new shipment of herbs and my manager wanted to throw away the old ones. They were indeed dying and a sad state to behold. I felt bad for said herbs and decided to rescue them (I ended up buying them for pennies apiece). There was a lot of spearmint, some lemon thyme, and a few other little delights. I brought them home, extremely excited. I figured my parents could plant them in their garden. How great would an herb garden be? My mom was a little less excited than me. Although she was happy to have some of the herbs, she refused to plant the spearmint. Apparently, spearmint is less innocent herb and more aggressive weed. It takes over anywhere you plant it. I even suggested planting it in the field behind our house (still their property) where not much grows except a few trees she’s planted and some weeds, but she would have none of it. In the end, I talked her into putting the herbs into one of her whiskey barrels (she has a few whiskey barrels cut in half that she plants every year with new annuals). Every year the spearmint came back in that barrel, and every year it was fuller and more beautiful than the last year. It quickly took over the barrel. The leaves smelled wonderful and fresh when crushed and the plant produced little white flowers that bees really liked. It was like a chia pet.
Can you guess what happened to the spearmint? It continued to grow until the roots had intertwined so much in the barrel that it started to strangle itself. The spearmint killed itself off because it had nowhere else to go. My mom could barely get a shovel into the pot to dig out the roots. But it’s a new year. A new summer. And she has just planted a new little spearmint plant right in the center of the pot. It looks so innocent. Ha.
There were other interesting things about the job, though. I hated working the register. If it was dead, I was bored. If it was busy, I was depressed. I can’t explain this; it is just being constantly reminded how small-town my home town is. However, occasionally I got to help unload plants off of special-delivery trucks. I was not especially fond of the cactus. These were large plants, for the most part. Three feet tall on average. They were wrapped with thin brown paper and although that helped, one wrong move and you had a hand fully of needles. I of course dropped one on my leg. I could write many blog posts on my clumsiness. But that’s not what this one is about. This post (although you may not see how, yet) is about spearmint.
About halfway through the summer we got in a new shipment of herbs and my manager wanted to throw away the old ones. They were indeed dying and a sad state to behold. I felt bad for said herbs and decided to rescue them (I ended up buying them for pennies apiece). There was a lot of spearmint, some lemon thyme, and a few other little delights. I brought them home, extremely excited. I figured my parents could plant them in their garden. How great would an herb garden be? My mom was a little less excited than me. Although she was happy to have some of the herbs, she refused to plant the spearmint. Apparently, spearmint is less innocent herb and more aggressive weed. It takes over anywhere you plant it. I even suggested planting it in the field behind our house (still their property) where not much grows except a few trees she’s planted and some weeds, but she would have none of it. In the end, I talked her into putting the herbs into one of her whiskey barrels (she has a few whiskey barrels cut in half that she plants every year with new annuals). Every year the spearmint came back in that barrel, and every year it was fuller and more beautiful than the last year. It quickly took over the barrel. The leaves smelled wonderful and fresh when crushed and the plant produced little white flowers that bees really liked. It was like a chia pet.
Can you guess what happened to the spearmint? It continued to grow until the roots had intertwined so much in the barrel that it started to strangle itself. The spearmint killed itself off because it had nowhere else to go. My mom could barely get a shovel into the pot to dig out the roots. But it’s a new year. A new summer. And she has just planted a new little spearmint plant right in the center of the pot. It looks so innocent. Ha.
