Shine

BUT THEY SURE DO SHINE!

I should have had no problem with that one little task out in the yard. Wrong. My roommate has always been the one to take care of the roses in the yard. I've never been real good with plants that take a special touch, like roses. I'm much better with things like the lawn and the mums that we grow every year up by the front porch.

Our roses were being plagued that particular summer with strange little bugs that made the leaves appear rusty. Thus, we proceeded to procure a treatment with the proper bug killing properties. The directions indicated several treatments might be needed to totally take care of the problem.

The end of the following week it was time to treat the rose bushes again. Since I was going to be home on that particular day, it made sense that I would be the one to treat the roses. I walked into the garage and picked up the spray bottle and headed out to the rose bushes.

I didn't think much about it at the time but the bottle should have had more in it than it did. I started with the largest of the bushes and sprayed those little buggers until the leaves were all covered with the stuff.

I did this to every one of the rose bushes in the yard and at the side of the house, all ten of them! By the time I was finished with my chore the bottle had just a very minute amount left.

As I walked towards the trash barrel to toss the bottle, the thought occurred to me that I ought to save the bottle just in case we had to get more to cure another attack of bugs. I had yet to really look at the bottle I held in my hand.

Walking past the trash barrel I turned the bottle around and looked at the label. Oh my! What a surprise it was!

I walked around the yard and surveyed my recent handy work. I began to wonder what would happen to the roses. I decided that rinsing off all of the plants with the garden hose as quickly as possible should be my next action. Rinsing seemed to do the job. I hung out around the yard for the next couple of hours watering the lawn, taking care of the mum beds out by the front porch and checking on the status of the rose bushes. I didn't see anything unusual, and the bugs didn't seem to be hanging around any more.

At this time I pondered whether I should tell anyone about what I had just done. I could say nothing but, what if all of the rose bushes up and died, for no real apparent reason?

I decided that if the bushes did indeed survive, this was one of the funniest stunts I have ever pulled. Even if they didn't, it was still very funny.

I went inside and called my roommate at work to tell her the story. When she answered I said, "guess what I just did?"

There was silence for a few seconds and then, "what?"

"I think I probably killed all of the rose bushes," I said.

"How, she asked."

I said, "you know that bottle of bug killer we bought for them?" I grabbed the wrong bottle off of the workbench in the garage.

She said, "what did you do?"

Well, I said, "I "Armor-Alled" everyone of the bushes!" Yes indeed, I had grabbed the bottle of Armor-All instead of the bug killer!

After several minutes of hysterical laughter from both of us, I said, "but they sure do shine!"

It still remained to be seen whether or not I did any real harm to them. Spring was just around the corner, so we would soon know. However, I truly believed that the mission had been accomplished because, we had not spied a bug on the roses since then.